This November I will be attending Barcelona knitting festival. It is a big deal for me, as it is my first time attending a knitting festival. I will finally have the chance to see and talk to many, familiar (online) faces and get a better sense of what the knitting community is like. The festival's lineup this year is especially attractive and I confess I still hold a secret hope of somehow scoring a Tapas and Yarn ticket, an evening event which is currently sold out.

One of the big perks of attending the festival will certainly be the chance to see and feel different types of wool. This is something I am really looking forward to, since I have been doing most of my wool shopping on the web, in part because online shopping seems to be a natural extension of spending time online, but also simply for lack of a better option (see my earlier posts).

Nevertheless when I do so, I still wonder most of the time about the color nuance I will ultimately receive. Even if the possibilities of seeing what you are actually going to get have greatly expanded, as technology advances and color displays become more and more accurate, I am still not 100% confident I know what the actual color will look like when I'll receive the parcel.

I imagine that the more experienced one is knitwise, the less one worries about color issues. I presume that after assembling many knitted garments (several sweaters, many accessories), perhaps it becomes easier to just let a newly-acquired yarn dictate what it wants to be. As appealing as this approach may be, it is one involving a levity of spirit that I don't always possess. Though I am deeply attracted by this knitterly attitude, at this stage, I still mostly operate in a pragmatic manner: first I decide want I want to make, then I usually order the yarn for the project.

Given my current level of expertise, I also still depend on a pattern's instructions and I am extremely cautious about altering it. Truth be told, I am slowly becoming more proficient in understanding the reasons why certain structural elements are included (read: short rows, mirrored increases etc.), but I am still on a learning path. I am fine with that. Nevertheless I usually want to "personalize" the pattern in some way, and that usually means choosing a different yarn or at least a different color palette. (Side note: as I dive deeper into this wool-universe, I become more and more interested in using lesser known yarns for new projects as a way to investigate and get to know them better, but I find it a bit difficult to select proper yarn substitutions online).

In conclusion, when choosing the yarn for a project I am faced with these options: A) buy the yarn from someone who sells a kit for the chosen pattern in a different set of colors, B) exchange a series of emails with said vendor asking for recommendations, or C) peruse other people's projects on Ravelry and try to get a sense of colors and/or types of yarn substitutions and D) I could go out on a limb and try something entirely new, (that is not the originally recommended yarn) but I probably won't. Either way, there is one big caveat: no way of knowing what effect the chosen colors will have against my skin tone (assuming that I am knitting a sweater for myself), let alone having a sense of how the yarn feels (it gets even more complicated if I already have some yarn that I want to use as an accent color, and I am looking for other yarn to combine it with, as this is very difficult to accomplish online in a timely fashion). The more laborious the process, the less enjoyable it becomes.

So.... did I mention I am looking forward to meeting a bounty of new-to-me fibers in Barcelona?

Signing off- until then

Soon it became way too hot to be holding all that wool in one's lap. Regardless of the weather I had also come to dread the intricacies of the pattern itself. Fast forward a few weeks on sleeve-island and my knitting mojo was all but gone.

Enter Stephen West.

I had been following West for a while now, contemplating whether or not I should join the ranks of his KAls knitters. To this day I have never ventured into knitting one of his patterns. I have read here and there that people have widely-differing opinions on his patterns, as can be expected and as they should. For my part, I found him to be a knitting-lifesaver and a restorative voice in one's knitting journey. His call to embrace knitting as having fun with colors can sometimes feel like a liberation from the self-imposed chains of perfectionism.

Why aspire to knitting perfection in every garment one makes? Why can't we "just say yes", and indulge in the meditative nature of the craft, come what may as a result? Perhaps the whole point is really not to make something you can wear, as it is to be on a knitting path, one that, for some, also takes the shape of spinning or dyeing or creating fiber art. In fact, there may be more to gain from unleashing one's creative juices than from producing a perfectly rendered artifact (despite best efforts, I doubt we would be able to knit our entire wardrobe).

I should have entitled this post "Ode to SW" as this is how grateful I feel to have been swept away from the tentacles of perfectionism!

I am an intermediate knitter and I am generally fascinated by patterns that attract me but also challenge me. I enjoy learning something new each time, whether a new stitch or a new construction. At times, I even get a crash on a designer's output, especially when I feel that someone has developed a distinctive, personal style (which may be or maybe not in synch with the latest fashion trends). I also like listening to people's own trajectories so I happily read their blogs or follow their podcasts and I like to know how they relate to the world of yarn, what it means to them and what made them forge a creative connection with fibers. So many designers and yarn makers have taken knitting into unexpected and surprising directions and, as a consequence, the knitting world is now, by and large, an attractive, variegated, somewhat diverse community. Certainly the conversation wouldn't be as compelling, if it hadn't been joined by such a plurality of voices.

So it is not surprising that, despite the standardization of knitting symbols and instruction (most patterns I follow are written in English), designers may greatly differ in their explanation styles. It is not the usage of a different (i.e. not standardized) nomenclature, but rather the existence of a series of assumptions that made it difficult for me to follow the explanations. I had the feeling that despite the given step-by-step instructions, more experience was necessary in order to make sense of the instructions. In retrospect, I think a lot of it was due to a difference in knitting traditions, that called for some supplemental translation work on the knitter's part (or else result in frustration and abandonment of the project). Personally, I have spent some time in great frustration, attempting to make sense of a (new to me) designer's explanation. I figured to would be worth recording the experience, as it made me acutely aware of an intangible that got definitely lost in translation.

I have spent some time trying to decide on a pattern (and yarn) for a spring sweater. Through Claire and HannaLisa (from Making Stories Magazine) I discovered Yoki, by Marianne Munier, a knitting project that seemed just right for my current skill set so I set on a mission to find the right yarn.

A small, local-to me, alpaca and sheep farm that produces, hand-dyes and sells small quantities of wool (it is called Lana al Pascolo) was an option I strongly considered, having fallen into a rabbit-hole of research on the history and vicissitudes of this particular wool. For some time I have been curious to try it. This wool comes from a local breed of ancient lignage (the Brogna sheep), Nowadays, there is a farmers' consortium that aims at protecting and safeguarding the autochthonous sheep. But, alas, for a series of circumstances the trip to the farm had to be postponed, and, itching to begin my Spring sweater project, I finally settled for the recommended merino yarn that the pattern suggested and bought it online.

The chosen yarn is De Rerum Natura Ulysse, turned out to be very enjoyable to work with and with beautiful colors (though I get a little bored by merino as a fiber, but that may just be a personal idiosyncrasy). I am glad that it is also a sturdy yarn, as I unravelled my Yoki's yoke so many times, before I could finally get it right. It has been a humbling experience for sure!

I have been wanting to detail the particulars of my stunted and frustrating beginning, but now that I have knitted about 50% of the sweater, I have made peace with it and I'd rather talk instead about the intriguing way the sweater is constructed.

This sweater has a most interesting (and new to me) drop shoulder construction: one begins casting on all the stitches for the back and shoulders and then creates the sleeve caps with short rows. Then, after reaching a certain length, the back stitches are put on hold and stitches are picked up on each side of the neck opening (on one side first, then on the other) to knit the front. Eventually, front and back are united (below the armpit) and the sweater is then knit in the round. No seaming (a popular feature, and a divisive topic of knitterly discussion, I know). I guess much of the verdict on the seaming vs no seaming debate would depend on the yarn itself and its ability to hold its shape in time, so it will be a good testing ground for Ulysses. (I should add that one of the most distinguishing features of this yarn is the presence of a of darker fleece in it, which-although not as visible as in a tweed yarn- lends it a slightly marbled appearance).

The stitch pattern was also quite "addictive", as promised. Incorporating the short-rows in the stitch motif however, was hell. I found the chart somewhat confusing and even after getting past the short-rows section, I was lost. Thankfully the Ravelry community is pretty generous and I was able to receive some pointers by those who had test-knitted the pattern but, even so I still kept losing my place in the chart, even after multiple tries.

Surely someone with more experience than me would have been able to see exactly where one needed to be at any given point, but I was utterly confused. It "helped" (my morale, at least!) seeing that others had attempted the project and then frogged it, but-truth be told- many more had completed it, seemingly without any of the issues I encountered. Of course, the more familiarity one has with different sweaters constructions and techniques, the less room there is for misunderstandings, but I now think this was a case of cultural misunderstanding. (And for the record: a few months later the designer has now updated the pattern adding more comprehensive charts and revised explanations).

That being said, I am now moving along blissfully. Too bad that the timing of my spring project is way off, as spring has abundantly sprang around here and I still have some work to do before completion. But, the pleasure is in the knitting itself, isn't it?