The Red Sweater

What I think of Debbie Bliss and Kaffe Fassett

As much as I’ve been knitting lately, you’d think I would have more to talk about. I think to some extent I’m still getting the hang of this blogging thing. I’ve always kept a journal of sorts, but never anything that I shared with anyone else. But here are some of my thoughts. Maybe this will begin my “100 things about me” file.

Debbie Bliss is my favorite designer. The details and planning that she incorporates into her relatively simple designs make knitting them a good learning experience. I believe she’s working for Baby Gap now? I want to be just like her.

I believe that Kaffe Fassett has more cones in his eyes than the rest of us. His designs boggle my mind. Someday, as a present to myself, I will be buying one of his kits and taking a vacation to the beach for a week to work on it. I imagine that 3 years later I will have it completed. I’ll take a picture and show you.

I want to quit my job and find one as an underpaid professional knitter/designer/yarn shop owner/any of the above.

I wish my boyfriend would learn how to knit so we could learn new things from each other but I would be afraid that he would start dipping into my stash.

Knitters and Cats

What is it, I wonder, about knitters and cats? It seems that every knitter I meet has a cat or two or four. There are a couple dog people, but they are certainly outnumbered. I, myself, am a big cat person, so I would personally say the connection is the above average intelligence that knitters and cats share that draws us together. Makes perfect sense.

Check out the straw, or cat rather, that broke the camels back. (what the hell does that mean?) Maddy, from Amy’s indigirl site, is gorgeous - and Amy’s site is pretty groovy, too!

{One down!} I hate finishing.

{One down!}

I hate finishing. Maybe hate is too strong. No, I really really don’t like it. I am a knitter, not a seamstress. But I suppose they go hand in hand. Part of my dislike is due to my lack of skill in this area. I think I’ve finally gotten over the desire to pull my mattress stitch really tight for fear a sleeve will spontaneously fall off, but I still can’t seem to cast off the neck loose enough on the first try. Time and time again, I’ve tried to pull a finished sweater over my head to find that my head is too big. Or, rather, the neck is too small. And so then there is the ripping (or do you say frogging? I don’t like the way that term sounds. Phonetically, I mean).

When I was little, I had giant horse teeth

I was browsing through a newly acquired copy of Rowan Magazine #17 and found this picture of these two little girls, modeling their hearts out for Rowan - they look just like me and my sister at that age; bazaar. That is what I looked like at 7, brown hair parted sharply down the middle and everything. I’ve since grown into my teeth. My little sister was the cutie little blond one. This magazine was printed in 1995 so these girls are just entering puberty about now - isn’t that weird? I’ve never thought about the models in these books and what happens to them when they are not modeling in these books.