Garter Stitch and Matching

HELLO. I hope everyone is well. I’ve been doing a lot of knitting, but it’s all been fairly uninspired so I’ve been knitting and ripping and re-knitting and, I mean basically it’s been about the process lately. I’ve been stuck in preproduction, something I haven’t been advanced enough to appreciate until recently. I guess it’s more conceptual, like considering how the finished fabric will drape and the textile equivalent of mood and tambre, a skill beyond mastering how to knit and how to purl. That’s where I’ve been getting stuck in my knitting, like my garments don’t “tell a story”, and did I mention that I’m five seasons of Project Runway more advanced than I was four months ago?

So what you see above is the Urchin beret in a stash yarn I was gifted by Cirilia in the fall of 2007. I only had enough yarn to work six or seven repeats on size 7 needles, knitting the small, but I blocked it over a dinner plate and it’s got a very lovely shape now. But the best part is that my second week here in Portland I scored a gorgeous coat for $15 and —

— THE COAT MATCHES THE YARN AND —

— I ALSO HAVE A MATCHING BAG (also inherited from Cirilia.)
Do not let the lighting fool you; the coat and the bag and the yarn are all the same color. The yarn has little flecks of like glitter material in it so it catches the light.
Fabulously, I also matched last year with my Foliage beret and Michael Kors winter coat and LG enV (not pictured.)

I also knit up some garter stitch mitts, also an Ysolda pattern. I have a lot of this pink tweed that I bought several years ago on closeout and have rued the purchase ever since, but it’s rustic quality seems appropriate for garter stitch fingerless mitts, all tweedy and scratchy and not at all capable of holding a shape.