Serious thinking, serious knitting

Long time no see! ^^
I haven't updated my blog for several days, because I was busy with many things - first of all, my husband got ill and I had to take care of him and you know how demanding men with a cold can be!... ^-^
Then, I've been doing different preparations for projects, not very interesting for blogging about (like, I got a pack of 3 kilos of tangled woollen bits and I had to wind them into separate colour balls).

I've naalbinded a pair of socks for my husband - these are different from the first pair - the heel has been added after I've made the ankle part (I've been making half of the ankle row not attached to anything, and then I've been picking up the stitches for the heel in the round). The ankle part has an open front.


Close-up.


I've been also making a swatches for the shawl I'm going to naalbind, here are two of them:

Finnish stitch


Russian stitch


It seems that you can easily naalbind flat objects, I'll just have to be careful and make sure I have the same number of stitches in each row (I thought about marking the first/last stitch with something, and move the marker as I'll go to the following rows).
Anyway, I'm starting the shawl this weekend, when I'm home alone (my husband is going to a historic event and I've decided to stay for many reasons). So, I'm going to put all my wool skeins on the living room table and start naalbinding this stripey colourful shawl! ^^

I've been also knitting these past few days - I've done half of the Emelia choker in black cotton(which is a birthday present for my best friend Anna, I already gave her the Allete wings by Jen, so it seems like she's getting the designer's line of accessories! *^v^*) .
And I started to knit a Christmas gift for my Mother-in-Law I (I have two of them, although only one husband, and I like both of them a lot! ^^) - the Liesel shawl by Yummy Yarn. I call it a shawl not a scarf, because I'm making it 5 repeats of the pattern wide, not two.
Photos as soon as there is anything to show you! ^^

My Manifesto

I've had a very serious conversation with my husband about my arts and crafts "career", because I felt that I got stuck in the dead point and didn't know what to do with it, which direction to choose, and desperately needed a small psychology session about it (he's not a psychologist but a very good listener and can draw inteligent conclusions from the facts given) . He asked me several basic questions about the things I like to do, the media I like to use, the subjects of my general interests, and put all the answers on paper (in fact, on the computer screen, but you know, we had them in front of our eyes ^^).
It turned out that nowhere in the first three answers appeared jewellery. I don't want to design/make jewelery as a professional, metal is not my choice of a medium to work with, it was fun to create some jewelery in the past but I cannot see my future in this field.
So, he asked me gently but firmly: "What are you doing at the second year of the jewelery making course, darling?..."
And frankly speaking I had no idea what to answer...
I know that I enlisted for this course last year to check whether I like it, am I good at it, could I be the jewelery designer if I know the technique?
The answers to the questions are the following:
- yes, I like it;
- yes, I am quite good at it - I can operate all the machinery, quickly learnt the techniques, I have some design ideas.
But the last question brings the following answer: making jewelery doesn't bring me any satisfaction, it is nothing compared to the state I am in when I lay my hands on the bag of wool or some new fabrics, I can spend hours in the fabric or yarn shop, touching everything, smelling the sheep smell of the skeins, planning what I would do with this or that cotton or jacquard, admiring the colours and textures...
And apart from that I couldn't afford my own workshop full of even basic tools and machinery so all the skills are nothing without practice.

So, I decided to give up the jewelery course. It's a waste of time and money at this stage (although I'm glad that I have some knowledge and skills in this field), and I'm going to look for the seamstress course instead, because I need to polish my sewing skills.

My mission is: to fully concentrate on fabric and yarns to find my own way of expressing my ideas with the use of fiber.

Sometimes it's good to just sit and talk about your problems with somebody, see it from a different perspective, hear the advice, and the sun is shining again! ^^