The knitting / blocking / photographing frenzy continues! I was just so annoyed by the large number of big blank “no featured photo” squares on my Ravelry page, and by the feeling of unfinished business…
Here are my two Ripleys:
I am not at all happy with the yarn I worked with. I bought it in my early days, when I had very little idea about the importance of different yarn weights, let alone yarn content…
All I cared about was color! And I still think these two colors would go well together, I’ve got about 50g left of each so I’ll have to whip something up.
It’s funny how much you can learn in such short time! I have been knitting for less than two years. Of that, I’d say I’ve been seriously knitting for a year. Yet when I had coffee with a friend who just started a month ago, I realized I had answers to almost all the questions that were popping into her mind – even the relatively unlikely ones such as the different methods of knitting (beyond the simple English vs. Continental dichotomy), e.g. knitting with a leather knitting belt!
A very important source of my education on the history and cultural aspects of knitting has been Kate, whose blog (not to mention the patterns!) is truly a treasure.
It’s also interesting how much lingo one learns when one starts a new activity. I learned to knit in my mother tongue. But soon, the interesting patterns and sources of inspiration ran out. I needed to find more. English was the obvious solution. I have been listening to English on TV since I was born, learning it in school since I was ten, it was my major in university, I lived and studied in an English-speaking country for a year, after which Ilived with an English-speaker for a year, after which I had a full-time job where communication was mainly in English for a year. I guess you could say my English is pretty good. :) But NONE of that helped when I was first faced with k1,p1,yo etc. This looked like Egyptian for all I cared! I was convinced I would never break the code. But, of course, I did. And very quickly at that. And it opened a whole new world to me.
Finally, a note on the Ripleys. Whenever I am doing an Ysolda pattern, at some point I always feel like someone is taking me backstage at a magician’s show and showing me how simple it is to do the big magnificent trick. The Ripleys and their ripples were no exception. A joy!
