crafted - The Seventh Sphinx

I have knit a few things, actually. Pretty much all scarves, but scarves of increasing complexity and (to me, though I give them away) appeal.

The beauty of knitting something yourself is that you can get (skill/fortune willing) just the design you want. Again and again I come up against this wall of knowing precisely what I want, and not being able to find it anywhere [ex-cerebrum]. Or perhaps it can sort of be found, but is not realistically purchaseable. This doesn’t mean I can’t have what I want, though…it just means I can’t have it yet. And that it may require a crafting adventure of no small effort/duration. [Possibly years. But I can be patient.]

This is the scarf I knit my little brother for Christmas. It was a kind of dry-run of the pattern, to see if I want it for myself. Which I do. In cream, and a slightly smaller gauge as this one turned out so wide as to border on editorial (I didn’t quite follow the pattern. Typical.).

[Though that’s going to take a year or more. This scarf is 6′ long, and I am only sporadically in the mood to knit.]

I like the simplicity of this pattern*; the end product looks kind of intricate but the pattern itself is all intuitive repetition and doesn’t even require consulting a guide.

*Lion Brand Harbor Scarf pattern, in Loops & Threads Cozy Wool in ‘moss’

This generic stocking cap/beanie has been sitting in my closet for years, forgotten (why did I ever get it in the first place?), but I came across it on a bad hair day recently and what do you know, I like it. It has the effect [like baldness, or very short hair, or a swimming cap] of isolating and so throwing a spotlight on the face, which results in a whole new set of instincts about presentation. Namely, I want to wear unprecedented volumes of eyeliner.

After years of passively owning both the stocking cap and this cute little whale patch (which I think I got when I was 10 or so, and have somehow preserved all this time), I finally happened to think of them both in the same moment, gathered needle and thread (I sewed a thing!), and lo, a new and improved hat was born.

Theorize that part of me has the precise aesthetic appreciation of a little Korean girlchild*.

*Exhibit A: my current cellphone charm is a stuffed baby turtle:

I want to wear it all the time now, provided eyeliner. And black eyeliner, too, which I almost never wear. Like so:

I like accessories like this; something slightly out of my normal style range that inspires me not to look like myself and to experiment with entirely new patterns. Thus expanding my range and allowing for still greater expansion.

The only thing is, once I put it on, I am committed. Can’t really take it off…disaster underneath. [This is the trouble with hats, for me. Also my head is kind of big?]

Still, satisfying to have raised a dormant object up into a state of usability.

Category: crafted

crafted: I knit a thing!

crafted: patched beanie