Too much!!

I know I know, two posts in a week!

I'm determined to inflict every stage of this project on the world at large (well my half dozen or so followers at any rate!)

So the next stage is choosing designs.

This wool struck me as being Kauni's big brother. It's softer than the Kauni, but seems to have a similar colour range, so I've spent an hour or so sifting through my bookmarks to find a few possible charts. I really want this bag to be a work of art.

I've looked at everything from hexagon piecework to entrelac to Scandinavian two-colour charts and so far here's a selection. For anyone who's not heard of Kauni before, I recommend googling "Kauni Damask" for photos of the striking vibrancy possible with these rainbow wools. I don't want to get into copyright bother but cutting and pasting pictures direct.

So anyway, here are a few colour chart possibles: first the damask chart looks like this: then there are other charts taken from my favourite Scandinavian resource, Jessica Tromp:
Rainbow yarns can give an absolutely stunning effect when one ball is started off at a different phase from another. Kauni Damask is a fabulous example of this, but there are other contrast patterns that work well too. The important thing is that the "pace" of the colour changes in the two balls being worked stays the same, and this in a way dictates the choice of chart to be worked. So ideally the pattern chart will have equal numbers of main and contrast stitches, and there won't be one row where one strand of yarn travels across umpteen stitches that are knitted from the other ball - quite aside from the tension problems this can create, there will be more yarn used in the knitted stitches than in the carried yarn, with the result that the colours will get out of step with each other.

But having said *all* that, it might not matter too much once I've worked out the final bag shape and dimensions, and decided which colour panel goes where. I intend to use two or three designs for contrast; the jury is still out though whether I am brave enough to attempt to sew in the zip, or even to attempt the felting.

I feel a tension square coming on.

And now for something completely challenging...

My Ultimate Knitting Bag: Part 1

For yearsnyearsnyearsnyearsnyears I have been in search of that elusive perfect knitting bag. And it's eluded me because I never really understood what it was that I wanted from it. Finally, after much analysis, I've come to the conclusion that what I want doesn't really exist so I will have to have a go at making it myself.

Now I read other people's knitting blogs and find myself wondering just how they can find knitting *that* interesting to write about it so much. Me, I'd rather knit than type about it. So now really isn't the time to admit that I've just deleted 6 long and tedious paragraphs about what makes the perfect knitting bag...

So anyway, here's the bare bones (and here's where I curse my camera for not having caught the sheer vibrance of the colours involved). The yarn is a sample of 15 balls I bought from China courtesy of Ebay - pure wool in the most gorgous array of colours. The handles and magnetic closures are red leather with punched tabs for stitching into place. The handles, zip and closures are all finished in the same antique brass as the feet. The silver bar affair is a Gladstone closure fitting so the finished bag will hold itself open as needed, and the white plastic aida will form the base and bottom few inches of the sides of the bag. Finally it's all laid out on a really vibrant scarlet needlechord material I bought for lining - tough but very soft, and at £3 for 3 metres, also very cheap!

Ends and beginnings.

I finally have to admit that I am giving up studying. I'm doing my best to see the current course through, but it's unlikely I'll even finish it. After this, no more courses with OU, at least until I am physically fit enough to be able to sit down for a day without it impacting on my health and wellbeing for a week afterwards.

I know that sounds barmy, but I have been realising lately, and it's made me feel incredibly sad, that a day spent studying = a day of less moving than I need to do; a day of all my spoons spent and then some; and then a week or two of studying will equal a month of afternoons in bed. It's just so bad for me.

So I'm trying to bring my weight down; I need at least 2 sessions a week in the gym to give me the kind of energy boost that means I can get on and live a normal life. For me fibro plus a combination of different arthritises means that for every hour spent in bed one day, I will spend an hour and a half the following day. Fatigue, in my case, really does beget fatigue. So I need to fight it. And that means giving up something I've loved (and sometimes hated) for a lot of years now.

I won't get my graduation picture on the mantelpiece - and that thought, bizarrely, chokes me up. It's what I've always yearned for, since almost failing my A-levels 30 years ago. But you know what, now I have new dreams and new ambitions. I just need to aim at them now.