For most brand-new assistant professors, life is so busy during their first year that they hardly have a moment to themselves. My first year isn't quite that busy, because I work for a teaching university. That means that I don't have to worry as much about keeping up an active research agenda as I would if I worked for a research university. That said, I've been pretty darned busy! But not so busy that I couldn't squeeze in a few simple knits, when I had brain power enough left at the end of the day. I've also been fighting a bad case of startitis, perhaps with the mistaken impression that if I start more projects I'll feel more productive. Ha! I say, ha!
When I first heard the buzz about the Rowan KidSilk Creation "yarn" I looked and thought, "interesting" and started to think about how I could make some myself. Creation is really just a huge i-cord made with a posh laceweight yarn -- you could take one of those big knitting rings and rig it up with something pretty in your stash, and there you'd have your own Creation -- and a "skein" is only nine yards long. I didn't get any further than thinking about it, however, because that was about the same time that I landed the job and the madness began. About two weeks ago, though, the Webs catalog came in the mail, and there was an ad for Creation again. Huh, I thought, and showed it to one of my colleague who knits. She already had a head of steam on for finding a skein of Malabrigo Rasta, so we ended up down at the local yarn store and while she was hunting for a super-chunky yarn I found Malizia by Mondial. It's almost exactly the same as the Rowan, but in more colors and with a little sparkle thrown in. I fell for it.
The thing about Malizia and these other mondo-i-cord "yarns" is that you just get your needle in, create loops, and use other sections of the icord to knit it into itself along one edge, gathering it in and making a scarf of it. Two hours and a little bit of hand-stitching with sewing thread later, you've got a fluffy scarf. Before I made this, I wasn't as excited about a fluffy scarf as I was about getting my hands on the yarn and seeing it work its magic -- it was about the process. But now that I have the product and have worn it, I like it just fine. It's a pretty olive green with gold flecks, it's warm, and fashion-forward. I named the project "Brescia Scarf" because the yarn is made in Brescia, the nifty northern Italian town where I stayed in 1997. Gosh, that was almost exactly five years ago.
In one of the other yarn catalogs that have been landing in my mailbox, I found a pattern for sale that will make a necklace. I was not going to pay five dollars for instructions on making an i-cord and then stringing the ends on beads -- so I indulged the startitis again, dug around in the stash, and came up with two balls of Noro Sakura, which had been an impulse purchase over five years ago. It's a sock weight yarn, with wild color swings and funky wrapped sections. It's perfect for a knitted necklace. I can also see using other yarns for i-cord necklaces -- something with a little weight and crunch, maybe.
I used only a fraction of the ball, so I cast on for yet another cowl. Using number seven needles, cast on 120 stitches, join for working in the round, and do a 1 x 1 rib until you run out of yarn. I've got about two inches of cowl now, and still haven't run out of yarn on the first ball.
My next project is going to be a pea pod for a baby. Yes, that's me making a baby knit, but no, I'm not having a baby. Our department secretary is having twins! and my knitting colleague and I are going to each make her a pea pod, one for each pea. Too darned cute.
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