Stop with the boxes!

I get it, OK? Knitting trends follow real trends and right now the trend is for boxy and shapeless, drapey and organic.

I understand the appeal of this aesthetic. Just take a look at one of the jumpers from the new Brooklyn Tweed Collection. This is imago from Wool People 9

Imago from Wool People 9

I get why people like this look. I like this look.

But boxy and loose doesn't suit all of us.

How I knit

Lying on the sofa, watching youtube gaming videos.

Often there is a cat sleeping on my legs.

This is, honestly, pretty great.

How do you knit?

Luck

Luck is finding 50gram of 100% cashmere yarn on ebay for £5 including purchase.

Skill and persistance turn that into a soft, warm, simple shawlette.

My good luck is sometimes somone elses bad, too.

'Join in the round, being careful not to twist'

I've never had a problem with this before. I was, in fact, a little dismissive of people who found it hard. 'I'm a newbie!' I scoffed, 'And I can manage it'.

I suspect my current difficulties are punishment for my hubris.

Done, and done

Drama Llama Akapana is all done and had its first outing on the same trip to Sheringham I talked about on saturday.

It's only my second garment ever, and it has some flaws, but in general I'm pretty pleased.

Awkard pictures below the cut.

The joy of planning

By the time you read this, the buttons will be sewn onto my Drama Llama Akapana and finished pictures will be up on Ravelry (plus a final blog post about that vest), and I will most likely have cast on for the Carats vest.

When I saw this I fell in love. A very kind person on Ravelry bought me the pattern as a gift AND sent me some lovely discontinued Rowan yarn to make it with. I'd be very happy if more people would send me garment quantities of yarn!

Craft Families

My husband has been 'knitting' much longer than I have. Except, he knits with pliers and steel.

He makes chainmail. And he's very good at it.

He hand winds every link himself, cuts and fastens them together. He makes full shirts and jewellery.

Sheringham

Today I went to Sheringham, a local seaside town with a strong tradition of yarncraft, to check out a small local yarn fair that was advertised.

It was very small, but had a nice selection of booths, including a woman selling yarn spun up from the sheep she raises. I didn't get any of that, because Watercolours and Lace were there and I fell in love with an alpaca/silk/cashmere laceweight skein almost the exact colour of the sea.

Purple and sparkly

I am not a very good spinner. But then, I've been spinning using a drop spindle just over a month, so I can't really expect to be excellent.

My first ever yarn can be seen below. Yuck.

Yuck

(Crazy brain, of course, says 'if you can't be the BEST EVER, INSTANTLY, what is the point?' We don't listen to crazy brain).

Spinning is, if anything, even more mindless and soothing than the simple knit stitch. And it's a miracle of physics, too, which I enjoy a lot.

I recently spindled up some lovely Gothika fibre from Countess Ablaze. My two-ply thick and thin yarn isn't the prettiest in the world, but the pictures certainly don't do it justice. It's sparkly, and full of subtle gradiations of purple.

I love purple.

Purple AND sparkly

I've been working on plying together some corriedale I bought from a local shop. It's two shades of - what else - purple and I experimented with mixing in some tester fibre that countess ablaze sent me. I quite like the effect, and will do a full post on that another time.

It knows what it did.

This is my Rough Comfort shawl. I started knitting it because I wanted something I could snuggle into when I was having a bad day. And look! Look at those pretty, subtle cables and that jagged contrast edging.

 

The problem is IT'S having a bad day. It's hibernating in my knitting bag right now.

You see, the problem is it has an added bit, that is delicate and lacey and full of deliberately dropped stitches. And I have made a MISTAKE on that section. I started knitting the jagged point in the wrong direction.

So I have had to very carefully unravel it, and now I have to get the energy together to keep knitting and figure out where I am.

FLUFF DELIVERY

As well as a knitter I'm a spinner. I use a drop spindle to turn fluff into string, and it's wonderful and I love it. Stay tuned for an update all about that in the near future.

Right now I just want to be excited about my new fluff that just arrived today.

Fibre

 

The problem of sizing

I'm sort of medium fat. It's an awkward size, actually - too big for most regular shops, on the smaller side for the fat girl shops. It's the kind of fat where I get well-meaning people saying 'oh, you aren't FAT fat' like fat is the worst thing in the world you can be.

Personally, I think fat is less awful than a lot of things I could be, but hey. There's plenty of people in the world who think it's a moral failing to get fat and look unfuckable to them, and they are more than willing to tell me all about it. So I'm fat. It's OK. You can use the word.

The problem is, that despite all the talk about how when you knit your own clothes you can make sure they fit, is that a lot of them crap out somewhere between a 38" and a 42" bust. I'm a 44" bust, and not an experienced enough knitter to do the maths to make it bigger for me.

Welcome!

Welcome to Fat, Lazy and Knitting, yet another knitting and spinning blog in the vast sea of them.

Why Fat, Lazy and Knitting?

Well, I'm fat (a UK size 20) and I'm currently unable to hold down a full-time job (so lazy, at least according to the papers) and I like to knit.

Knitting has been a wonderful discovery for me. I started properly about six months ago and have loved every second. I loved it so much I am learning to spin, because why not add yet another skill that was long ago made obsolete by mechanisation?

This blog is going to be kind of a hybrid.  Sure, there's going to be plenty of pictures of work in progress and finished things, but there's also going to be discussions of how much I mess up, and discussions about WHY I am doing this particular thing and why it appeals.

There MAY in some distant future be discussions about the relation of handcrafts to politics, gender etc. This is if I can formulate the foggy thoughts swimming around in my head.

As I get better as a knitter and spinner, maybe there'll even be some genuinely wonderful things.

In the meantime, I leave you with my first finished jumper. Warning: Contains images of an overweight person existing. The pattern was Flax by Tin Can Knits, available for free. And if I can knit it, you can knit it.

Be seeing you soon.