Dear Angora,

I LOVE YOU!  I am sorry that ‘Brain’ waited 24 years before finding you and needing a reason to touch you again. Thank you Fate for intervening. Thank you glove knitting project for running out of merino/silk (actually Brain was not working on that design day). Brain then redeemed itself by thinking to find matching angora and add fingers…don’t ask.

Alpaca and Qiviut you are wonderful fibres too, but Angora, it has been way too long.

Love,
Fingers
(who hope that Brain will work harder and finish/design projects with Angora)

Angora through the years.  Touch is one thing a computer can not give…

Angora toque from late 1980s

Note the color picture in the middle; from a flyer today - white angora hat and scarf. See above right hand scraf from late 1940s or early 1950s knitting pattern book.

aahhh...

Sweater Panic

I don’t have a sweater on needles…not from this decade anyway, and I, I feel ...weird. How does that happen? I have at least four sweaters projects in my head, the yarn bought and I haven’t even started the gauge swatches, let alone the designs.

I list the projects in notebooks, in the ravelry queue, favorites, in my head; but until I go upstairs to the ‘loft’ and find the yarn, touch it and become inspired again, look through magazines and I don't start knitting.

What to start? The fair isle cardigan that I promised my niece two years ago and is six now? (I did buy a lot of yarn).

A cardigan for my Aunt who is nearing ninety years old…eek!

 My mother who has knitted all her life but nothing for herself since the 1950s and she is also in her eighties, a sweater 'top'.

A shrug for my hair stylist of 20 years and her bare shoulders make me cold just looking at her.

Or a vintage inspired item – not even an image yet in my head, for a successful business woman, my niece (sorry girls, husband side of the family!) A sister in-law who needs a hug...(husband's sister) and most likely will not be a sweater.

The fair isle cardigan is winning out. I have not designed or knitted color work for at least 15 years. Design decisions – am I going to steek the centre front – not for a six year old! I can only stretch the mind and fingers so far. But I do know how to chart a pattern...and I have not coloured for years!!