confessions of a former knitter

I was cruising the internet the other day, indulging in a little gizmo-porn, to be specific, a fantasy of getting one of the new, sexy, 2nd gen ipod touches. Drool, pant… Er…what was I saying?

Oh yeah. Porn.

Um, well, of course, ipods led to checking out ipod accessories, and that led to ipod cases, and somehow I ended up looking at an array of felted, knitted, ipod cozies, made by crafters everywhere.

That’s right, ipod cozies.

Well, I was so taken with the idea, that I decided right then and there to knit myself a bag, in an expression of my sublimated ipod lust.

You know how it is.

I considered buying some yarn, but then I thought surely there must be something in my old knitting stuff that would work. After all, I was quite a knitter pre-baby. Once upon a time, I had had quite a stash. Surely there must be something.

So I waded through the piles of clothes and stored items and sheer junk, all the way back into the Narnia of my closet, and I found [cue holy music] my knitting basket! And Lo! It was full, just FULL, of gorgeous yarn I had completely forgotten about. But not only that, it was crammed with half completed sweater projects I had COMPLETELY forgotten about. Crammed.

And oh yeah, part of being a knitter that I had also forgotten about, is Knitter’s Guilt—that feeling in one’s stomach when one looks at all the half finished projects, and all the millions of yards of yarn, that one has yet to knit. I wish I hadn’t remembered about Knitter’s Guilt.

Look at this:

Half a black silk pull-over.

Half a burgundy cable cardigan.

ALL of a cotton fitted cardigan—all it needs is to be blocked and sewn together.

Look at this gorgeous thing, a nordic lopi creation. All it needs is a collar of some kind.

Look at the yoke—did I ever really know how to knit like this?

Here is the yoke and shoulders of this luscious mohair cable cardigan. Fuzzy and super soft.

Look at all these single skeins, leftovers from past projects. What do you do with these things? Why do so many knitting patterns call for one skein too many? Maybe the patterns are written by the yarn companies….

What was this little thing going to be? A hat?

The back of….something. Gorgeous rust colored yarn—the picture didn’t really get the color.

Sheesh, I’m so embarrassed. I had NO IDEA this stuff was sitting back there.

Anyway, I did find some nice dark purple wool for my felted bag plan. I think it might be leftovers from a sweater I knitted my sister a million years ago, a sweater that I think turned out to be too small for her, but she graciously (almost) concealed this fact from me. The purple will make a good bag.

And I’m putting a pocket on it for my current, ancient, black and white, wood-burning ipod. Stay tuned.