Playing Catch Up

"Learn to pause... or nothing worthwhile will catch up to you."
-Doug King

I don't know about you, but I often feel like the answers find me, rather than the other way around.

I can fret and fuss, knit and rip out, turn a problem over and over in my mind with no concrete results.

And then, one day, clear out of the blue, as I am engaged with something else, the solution pops into my head.

I usually know that a design isn't quite right, but I often can't tell you why or how to fix it.

Yet, I know when it is right...

And when it isn't...sigh...

That is what happened with Delphinium.

When we last left our heroine, she looked like this:

I liked the bottom. I like the sides. I thought I liked the twisted stitch center panel.

But the more I looked at it, the less I wanted to knit on it. That is always a bad sign.

After ten plus versions, I had reached the end of my imagination. So I left her in the dust knitting basket for a couple days, traveled north to the family lake, and put in a little time on another design I have been germinating.

The yarn is from a shop in Lansing, so I needed to decide if I wanted to stop on the way home and get more of this shade of Rowan Felted Tweed. Gotta match dyelots...


This is Lakeshore Tweed, because, well, it's tweed and I'm at the lakeshore - Duh!!!

The color reminds me of the sand beaches and the pattern reminds me of seagull tracks.


One rainy day later, I knew what was wrong with Delphinium. She was too literal. Instead of trying to replicate the entire plant structure, with it's branching upward flowers, I decided to make each panel represent the actual bloom.

I began looking for patterns that mimicked the graceful curves and layered aspect of the delphinium spires.


How'd I do?


I am a lot happier with the way the color interacts with the pattern in this version. Much more graceful...


I kept the connecting stitches intact as I had them on the last version, including the fagoting.


In the evenings, when my eyes are tired, I am finishing up the knitting on Chromatic Shift, since it is a much easier (to say nothing of larger) pattern.


Both patterns should be ready for write up next week.

From the north woods, signing off...