Slave to the Needle
Speaking of my sweater, a friend recommended the web community ravelry.com to me. It’s a free knitting/crochet website sort of set up like the myspace thing but not as annoying, seizure inducing or “friend-based coolness factored.” You basically have access to free patterns, ideas and are linked in with a bunch of other fiber nerds. There’s forums for questions, groups to join to go do real life knitting/crochet with other humans in your area (good for when we make that upcoming move), and your own little profile, complete with your list of projects and photos.
I’m not addicted to it, but I’m enjoying it so far and it makes me feel a bit more motivated to work on my projects since it is announced and listed. I also have a queue based on other people’s projects that I’d like to do one day. The neat part it that it’s all linked. My current sweater is using yarn I got in Peru. By entering my yarn type, I can see who else is making projects with the same brand of yarn and what the projects are. The sweater I made years ago (and never finished) from the SnB book is on my list, meaning I can now see who else is making that sweater (and see fotos of their work). It’s really fun to see how one pattern can look so different.
So it’s nice to be back at the knitting needles and even nicer to be linked into a community since I am far from home or friends to knit/crochet with. Especially since this new sweater is designed by me and I’m playing it all by ear. I’m trying to use Elizabeth Zimmerman’s techniques for a raglan sweater and am very roughly looking at a sweater pattern book I got from the library. We’ll see how much I get done in early summer Florida!