Restingmotion

As you might have surmised I have been having niggling little doubts about Tesla although I haven’t come right out and said so; the evidence is present in my constant natter about the fabric and how it looks, feels, etc.

The background is such: I fell in love with Tesla at ArtFibers partly because it looked neat on the skein and I loved the IDEA of it, stainless steel with cotton nubs.  I also loved the look of the knitted swatch even though I did think the gauge was a little loose in the store as well.  I was attracted to the flexible, open, but still chain-mail meets hippy fiberness of it and it was precisely this juxtaposition that really caught my fancy.

However, when I got it home and knitted the swatch I found that I couldn’t really with live with knitting that fiber at that gauge.  It was too loosey goosey for me, too floppy.  I hated knitting it and I didn’t have much faith that I would enjoy wearing it.  Remember I am the kind of person that snags everything, Clutzina herself, a walking mess.  If a fabric can be caught, pulled, or snagged I will do it.  Hence, I tend to like my knitting on the tight and firm side.  Oh, not so tight as to be stiff, I like drape, but I go for more of a structured drape than a lose, flowy, laid-back kind of look.

That doesn’t mean I am not attracted to the more shiny, brilliant and unusual offerings out there – I did after grow up in surrounded by a family of outgoing, smart, witty, brilliant people, a group in which I am the shy, dull button. I can’t, at this point in my life, make any pretense that I am suddenly going to become clever, cool, or hip.   That doesn’t keep me from liking to be around the bright lights, just not in them.

So back to Tesla.  Claudia commented that the fabric is nice but different, key word different, at the smaller gauge.   Now, if you look at Claudia’s Tesla you will see the wonderful open steely nature of this yarn as it is meant to be.  My Tesla is not like that, it is denser.  In Claudia’s sweater the stainless steel is the star and in mine it is more the supporting player.  Still important but not the dominant characteristic.  Still, I like the fabric, I will wear the sweater, but I still have those niggling doubts.  It is different, I know it is different.  My doubts weren’t brought about by the comment, but my own uneasiness, my own doubts that were simmering silently under the surface.  I have done this before, subverted a yarn’s basic nature into something else, bending it to my will, sometimes quite successfully, other times with less than stellar results.

I still wonder. But then I look at the original gauge swatch (I tend to save all those little things) and play with it a little then throw it back in the pile and shudder, it really does not affect me in a nice way.    If I have extra yarn I might make a scarf at a looser gauge, I might be able to handle that without strangling myself when I get something snagged running through the subway. 

I wonder if I have subverted the nature of Tesla, taken a wild funky girl and chained her to a boring desk job, or have I just provided a structure in which she can shine?.  Only time will tell.

As usual, my mental image of what I could accomplish in a weekend and the actual output did not even begin to compare.  I always seem to start out with great plans, as if I have some kind of unrealistic expectations of what I can do in a given period of time.  I wanted to get Posh sewn and basted together, check the fit on the first sleeve, and hopefully start the last sleeve.  Of course I wanted to work on Tesla as well and do a little sewing.    Posh is still neatly folded next to my knitting chair, waiting to be assembled.  I cut a garment out to be sewed, and otherwise zippo, nada, nothing, zilch on the creative front.

Of course other things were going on:  I spent time with my honey, and I suppose that is the primary purpose of the weekend anyway, we certainly don’t usually get to see a lot of each other during the work week.  I did get about half the irises transferred from their temporary holding bed in the vegetable garden to the new front flower bed (iris bed).  The poppies and daffodil bulbs arrived on Friday evening so I also managed to get them planted in the same flower bed.  I am waiting for lilies, tulips, and rock-garden iris for the shallow area along the ledge on one side.  I usually order my tulip bulbs from a nursery rather than buying them locally because I seem to get significantly bigger flowers.  I am a glutton for big beautiful tulips and I love to put them in bowls to overflowing and bring them in the house every spring.  I buy my tulips based on what color combinations I want in the bowls and vases and how long I can extend the cut tulip season.

The bulbs weren’t all planted until Sunday morning and Sunday afternoon was already slated for another trip to Pittsfileld, as are the next two Sundays as well, for our annual September chamber music series.  This time I drove up and the sweetie drove back so I only got in half the knitting time, but it was a beautiful day for a drive, there is a good bit more red in the trees, especially as we get closer to the Berkshires.  The arthritis in my hands, especially the right, has been acting up lately, and as it is primarily in my fingers at the moment, knitting has been slow.  It doesn’t stop me, just slows me down a little, especially manipulating the needle around the little wire loops of Tesla.  Still, the arthritis is still more of an intermittent thing than it is a constant annoyance, I know it is there, but I shall continue to ignore it for a little while longer at least.

Tesla is coming along beautifully, if slowly.  I had initially worried that I would loose the stainless steel effect at the smaller gauge I am using but it is turning out quite nicely.  You see the wire and the cotton slubs and the fabric has a nice texture and drape and a nice firm, almost scrunchy yet still soft, hand with some body.  It is not as stretchy as some knits so I will have to double check the fit as I go along, which reminds me that I should do that soon, perhaps at the end of the next skein.  I am about three-quarters through the third skein and I have about 4 inches of the body done, so I am definitely glad that I ordered the extra yarn.  We have yet to see whose calculations are correct, mine, or Artfibers when I called them up and the recalculated the yardage at my gauge.   There is about a 5 skein difference in the two calculations so I think I will find this very interesting.

And wonder of wonders, I learned today that there is indeed pink or purple in the yarn.  The trusty old Ott Light was right (see previous photo).  When I had the yarn out in sunlight today I could see the pink, it is more subtle than in the photo in my sewing room at night under lights, but it is there, and it intensifies if placed next to anything in the pink-purple range.  This is really cool.  I think I like metallic gray with subtle pink tones even more than plain gray.