My current knitting is fun, but endless. Fun because I love to swatch. Endless because I have to make 200 of them and they are getting progressivly larger. Which makes them more interesting, but also more time consuming, each requiring a little more attention. I bring them everywhere with me. Tote them around in a plastic bin which though a ugly, holds everything nicely, and can get squashed without breaking. At home I move from window to window, to capture the best of the day’s natural light.
Above you see me in the living room. Surrounded by books, and pondering buttons. I’m able to read during the most boring parts of the knitting, and glance at inspiring pictures during the other parts. I find the dinner hour approaches startlingly fast, so I’ve got my funny old fashioned French Cooking in 10 Minutes, from 1930, sensible and hilarious at the same time.
“The first thing you must do when you get home, before you take off your coat, is to go to the kitchen and light the stove. It will have to be a gas stove, because otherwise you’ll never be able to cook in ten minutes.
Next fill a pot large enough to hold a quart of water. Put it on the fire, cover it and bring it to a boil. What’s the water for? I don’t know, but it’s bound to be good for something.”
Your table is testament to your creative mind! There’s something quite thrilling about looking at a stack of so many different fairisle patterns & colors like that.
Ahhhhh… that does look like fun. Are your swatches tubes? They look so neat.
Love your swatches! 200 eeek!
Lynn, yes I’m knitting tube swatches with magic loop. Magic loop by accident…magical!
Beautiful piles. The dinner hour happens every day, and yet it sneaks up on me too, like a big surprise for which I’m unprepared.
Such lovely, wooly, textured, colorful piles! Looking forward to seeing them after they grow up.
That cookbook is a HOOT, and totally right, as well.
Thanks, I just had a scare that they were all 1cm too narrow…really sinking feeling, but I’ve washed them and they seem much more relaxed, I’m still going to add an inch worth of stitches.
What, pray tell, do you need 200 color work swatches for???? They are gorgeous, of course, but you will be working your pretty little fingers to the bone. And I agree the cookbook is a hoot. Maybe you could just read passages from the cookbook and that would serve as comic nourishment???
Such an inspirational photo! Love those swatches. Do I read Açores in one of the books?
Gorgeous swatches indeed! Where do you find the time?!?
What a gorgeous stack!!!
Thanks! Xana, it does indeed say Açores. My husband surfs there and our house design was influenced by the houses there.
Karen C, I just put my nose to the grindstone, and as I mentioned, bring them everywhere.
Elinor, I love your new Mittens in Twist Collective! Congratulations!
What beautiful swatches, and I absolutely love the turquoise buttons too.
Oh, your wonderful French cookbook reminds me of a TV series that has just aired here in Britain. Jamie Oliver’s 30 Minute Meals. A bit longer in preparation than your book, but he takes the same kind of stance. ‘Boil the kettle – you might need it, get out a chopping board and all of your knives and pots and pans and we’ll make something or another.’