I Create, Therefore I'm Awesome.

So, in today's post:

Yarn Haul!!  Let's see, some circular needles, Wool-Ease in an orangey color, Vanna's acrylic brand in Brick,  some deep burgundy Wool-ease, and Purple Cotton for some colorful placemats I'll be knitting for a couple about to get married.

 Unsuccessful use of acrylic for a pair of hand-warmers:

The design is cute and all, but the yarn is so damn stiff, that it doesn't conform to my hand and wrist.  I used one of the crappiest brands on the market, though.  Vanna's Acrylic is WAY better. Duly noted.

Also---
 I finished the Scarflet!!! Woot!!

I still need to block it to get the shaping better.  Also, and you probably won't notice in the photos, but the second skein I bought (Vanna's brand) was Clearly not from the same Dye Lot (I bought the first one last winter), so there's some color difference here.
This pattern was fun, incorporated some really nifty tricks that have given me some ideas for two new projects.  But I will set those aside for now while I work on this:

It is the beginning stages of a very easy shrug pattern. I thought that this would take some time to do with size 8 needles, but it's going faster than I thought. The above is what I've just done today...a cumulative 2 hours or so. I need to continue this for 27 inches, and it's already at 4, so about 6 more hours of work on this, and it will be near completed. That's not too bad, considering I knit on average about 3 hours per night when I'm home, not including on Public Transportation or *ahem* lunch breaks.



This bottom portion will be the sleeve finishing. Kinda cute, no?

The best part about this, though, is that I am actually making this shrug as something of a draft for a custom piece I am working on for a friend.  Hard to describe if you're not a nerd, so I think I'll just show you progress pics and describe it as I go along.  It's a big project, and will most likely take me about a month to actually complete. I also intend to use larger needles and thicker yarn. The wool-ease is so damn thin.

** This is the start of an idea to start offering customized knitting items.  Not just my own designs from scratch (although I do want to work more with that), but i also love the idea of collaborating with someone else to create something that they'd want.  This will hopefully be the first of many.

Also, as someone who is not actually a fan of money (it's a necessary evil, if you ask me), I'd love to create a small community of bartering. It could be as obvious as trading one craft for another (which I've done in the past), to trading for meals, recipes, services, artwork, fresh produce, first-borns, a bottle of rum... ;) **

You see where I'm going here.

Meanwhile, as a periodic break from the 'official' shrug so that I don't go mad, I'll be playing with various designs for fingerless gloves/arm warmers...especially knitting in the round. I have lots of (good and bad) acrylic that I can fool around with, and they're such quick and easy pieces, I'll feel accomplished in the midst of The Big One.

On a side note, all of this knitting is so exciting that I have failed to play my bass or write in almost a week. Normally I would be terribly worried by this, but I've noticed in the past that when I create elsewhere, the inspiration in the other areas just kind of comes to me. There's an ebb and flow with my creativity. I may not always be working on the same skill, but I'm always working on something.  They feed off of one another.  I used to get discouraged if I hadn't written for a while, or played for a while or knitted for some time. Now I realize that I need all of these elements to complete me as a creative person. It's interesting to think how each of these skills affect me in a different way:

Writing (fiction) is therapeutic for me; it allows me to put onto paper what I can't say out loud. I have a very active imagination, and I need to direct it somewhere. Blogging helps with this, but not on such a grand scale as creating another world full of characters, inspired by my own experiences.

Music is a purely emotional escape for me. It's where I drop my guard completely. It takes me to another level of thinking, with or without words. Hearing sounds come together (whether I play the bass or sing) to evoke a response from myself or another is one of the most powerful things on this earth.

Knitting, I think, is the most practical creative skill (if you can call it that yet) that I have.  If anything, it is probably the least internal creative outlet for me. The focus on patterns, some mathematics, a desired and fully envisioned outcome keeps me grounded in the world around me. Often, when I'm knitting, I'm thinking of someone else.  Also, it's not nearly as emotionally taxing as writing fiction or playing music. And so, it keeps me balanced.

These three things make up the core of my Creative Being. The more I cycle through them, the more necessary they become to my feeling of fulfillment. Without one of them, I'd feel a bit--well--empty.


So there you have it. Me in a nutshell.

~Pusher. Of. Pens.~

In my next post:
--Shrug Status
--Placemat Beginnings
--I like Spreadsheets
--Nerding out in public.
--Whatever else comes to mind by then?