The Recurring Persian Dream

About two and a half years ago, I found and fell in love with the Persian Dreams pattern.

WildJen's Persian Dreams (on Ravelry here)

That one is the one that really knocked me on my ass. I could not resist it. It remains the most beautiful piece of knitting I have ever seen.

A month later, I had a Come to Jesus with myself and decided I was crazy enough to knit this BUT not crazy enough to make all the color changes called for by the pattern. Solution: Self-striping yarn left from my Felici obsession. The amount remaining from knitting a pair of socks was enough to make one hexagon.

Two and a half months later, I was on block 6 of 24 and had redevoted myself to it.

Two years later, block 7 wasn't even close to being finished.

You know what's coming: DEPTH YEAR.

(mine ravelled here)

Yesterday I finished block 7. 

It took me the entire portion of the non-eating part of today's lunch break to get here: 

I didn't have a crochet hook, so I had to learn a new circular cast on. In case you ever find yourself in a similar predicament (and let's be honest, why would you?), I recommend this video. 

Even if I didn't have the cast on delay, let's be real about this project. It's going to take for-freaking-ever. There are 24 blocks. All of those blocks have live edges--288 stitches of live edges--that will be kitchner stitched to adjacent blocks.

I've thought about the best way to do this without plunging into the Pit of Despair. 

I thought about blocking the hexagons when I have a third of them done, and grafting those eight together. Maybe breaking up the project into smaller bits would be helpful. I could try to convince myself that things unfold as they should and trust that each hexagon was created at the right time in the right pattern with the right yarn. Just take a deep breath and work in tiny bits and believe that it's going to be gorgeous at the end.

I miss you so much, President Obama.

So, after giving this a lot of thought, I've decided there's only one path to completion here: Abandon any hope of completion. Lean into it. Accept that the rest of my life will be me knitting stranded colorwork with fingering weight yarn. If by some miracle I get finished with that before I die, the remainder of my life will be kitchnering together said pieces.

At the end, there has to be some sort of border around the whole thing--some way of dealing with the remaining live stitches. Lots of people have done i-cord rather than the 20-row border. Since I will never get to the border, I'm not bothering to think about it.

If I'm not enjoying knitting this, then I should quit. There is no reason to keep doing it in hopes of a finished product because it will never be finished.

Here comes block 8.

Embarrassment of Riches

A portion of my excitement over Persian Dreams is that I can use up a smidgen of my scrap sock yarn. I have a lot.

That may or may not be all of it. Don't judge me. 

I think epic knitting projects like this one benefit by a Come to Jesus conversation with myself. It went something like this:

This is a blanket knit out of fingering-weight yarn. It's going to take a long time. Pause and make sure you can accept that.

Accepted? Lovely. This is a blanket knit out of fingering-weight yarn in stranded colorwork. Pause and make sure you can accept the additional crazy.

Ready to proceed? Good. The pattern as written uses 14 different colors. Stop and think about the number of ends that is to weave in and the amount of yarn changes that is. Do you want to do this?

...No, I do not. 

Line thus drawn, I went to the stash and pulled out self-striping possibilities. As you all know, I love me some stripes. The stash reflected this.

Then I pondered the stripes. Some had very distinct colors, and some were so subtle as to almost lose the striping altogether.

I put all the strong stripers on the bottom row, the ones that had brown (plus sad Christmas) on the second row on the right, and the ones that I worried were too subtle on the top and second row left. There are 24 pieces to the blanket, so I decided to use the strong stripers and do 3 pieces in each color.

I started to knit.

Persian Dreams (mine ravelled here)

knit in Knitpicks Palette in black and Knitpicks Felici in Gummy Bear

After I knit a piece, I realized I wouldn't have enough scrap in any color to do 3 pieces. I got another opinion about the colors, decided to try to incorporate some of the subtle stripers, and plunged ahead. I should be able to figure out pretty quickly if I like the mix of subtle and not-subtle pieces.

And if I don't? I have options.

I feel a little embarrassed about how much Felici I own, but just a little. 

Certainly not enough to actually get rid of any 

or not buy more when it comes back with new colors.

Know thyself.

Persian (Day)Dreams

You know how sometimes you're just surfing the Internet, minding your own business, when you see something so beautiful you forget about everything you're currently doing, should be doing, and have planned to do for the foreseeable future?

Yeah, I had one of those recently over this:

Persian Dreams

I love this. Look at this one. Gorgeous.

I just received my--wait for it-- $8 check from the Indiana State Fair for the second place I won for the Knitsonik mittens. I used that as my excuse to buy the Persian Dreams pattern and its expansion pack.* Today I ordered 11 balls of Knitpicks Palette in black, which, as an unanticipated bonus, was on sale as part of their Halloween shenanigans. The black will be the background, and the foreground will be in

scrap

sock

yarn.

This is going to be awesome.

*You read that correctly. Expansion. Pack.

Love and Flowers for Boston

I was grateful to find something--anything--to do for someone touched by the Boston Marathon tragedy.

Happy Heart Cord (mine ravelled here)

Nothing any of us can do will ever be enough, but sometimes a little something is all there is. May those touched by this tragedy know that the entire world mourns with them.

Daisy Trellis (mine ravelled here)

So say we all.

In and Out of My Head

I'm in a bit of a funk. I'm having a hard time putting things into perspective. I know I'm extremely, extremely fortunate. I know I really like this little life of mine--Andrew, friends, job, hobbies, family.

But for whatever reason, I can't seem to stay centered. It is taking a tremendous amount of work to think through situations and view them for what they really are. Even when I get there, it's as if my mind has put them into perspective, but my gut has not. That doesn't feel like quite the correct image, but it's all I have.

There's nothing to do but plug on, looking for ways to get out of my head. Paige put out a Call to Needles to get help making 12" afghan squares she'll put together into a blanket for a family who recently experienced a tragedy. Seeing a chance, I knit up a few.

Getting a square that was actually 12" x 12" turned out to be harder than I anticipated. The blue one is a bit big, the purple one is pretty close to correct, and the striped one is too short. Paige assured me she could work some magic with crochet edging to make it work, and if she can't it isn't a tremendous amount of effort wasted. I was able to do these in a couple evenings.

I still feel cranky. It will pass.