Twinkle by Wenlan – Long Winter Armwarmers

Details:

• Fabric Content: 100% Wool
• Detail: Knit, Fingerless
• Product Care: Dry Clean Only
• Fit Guide: True to Size
• Designer Style No. 07-11-K16

From the couturecandy website:
“The Twinkle by Wenlan collection was born from designer Wenlan Chia’s affinity for design, love of art and prolific imagination. The collection is well known for whimsical and feminine designs that blend pop culture with the exotic. The perfect addition to your winter wardrobe, these arm warmers complete any casual outfit!”

Want a pair of these? Even if you had the between $84 and $124 needed to purchase these you’d be out of luck, because…..

But Twinkle loves knitters and the love is mutual. In the Holiday 2011 issue of Vogue Knitting magazine we have pattern #21 Arm Warmers Designed by Twinkle.

What is particularly generous about Ms Chia in making this pattern available is that this design isn’t merely last year’s item. It is hot out of the Twinkle by Wenlan Fall 2011 collection.

I just cranked out the first arm warmer for the right hand. The photo is unblocked right off the ndls but I’m not sure if this really needs blocking and, in any case, I don’t want to take it off (temperatures are starting to plummet around here). I love it and am super motivated to avoid second arm warmer syndrome (a malady from the 2nd sock syndrome group of diseases).

The pattern in the magazine does need a wee bit of tweaking. I knit it using magic loop ITR and need to mirror image the pattern after thumb placement for a truly symmetrical pair (further details on my Rav page).

Practical and stylish, it’s a quick knit, one of those deceptively simple patterns that give a tremendously sophisticated result.

THANK YOU TWINKLE!

From WIP to FO

You learn a lot about yourself crafting.

One of my challenges in life is climbing the boundaries to the finish line. Once a project is started and I have mastered the learning curve needed for completion, I’m easily distracted and falter in actually completing the task.

Of course, identifying one’s own character traits and actually fixing the things you’d like to fix it are two different things entirely!

But it is never to late and I have really been working to develop improved strategies. Crafting is a surrogate where I can practice some of these strategies and hope that they will spin off into the rest of my life.

All of this is just a preamble for tackling the pile of WIPs. here is one I just finished. It’s languish time was “only” about  11 months. It is amazing to me that once I decided to tackle it,  even with some frogging, it went to completion with a little bit of attention over the course of a single weekend.

The other curious aspect about working on the WIPs is that it feels really good to be crossing them off one by one. Not even becuase of finishing them, but making a decision about whether or not to frog is strangely liberating. Not to mention certainly liberating on the needles!

I know there must be some powerful psychology behind this and I would love to find out more about this topic.

Getting to grips with the WIPs

One of the very positive impacts of Rhinebeck was that it really rejuvenated my enthusiasm for the craft.

Partly this was seeing all the gorgeous hand knits on the Rhinebeck visitors, and partly also from seeing the new directions in knitting and crochet, as evidenced by all the terrific designers and innovators showcased at the festival.

Since rediscovering knitting and crochet as an adult, I’ve done a lot of hats, some lace, baby sweaters and the like but I have only really futzed around the edges of knitting. I have a passion for yarn and have collected a substantial fair amount but so far have only really played with it, testing out the properties of different yarns, trying different techniques (cables, moebius. what’s it like to knit with silk/mohair/superwash? etc.).

What I have not done much of however is making garments. There have been a few attempts.

For instance, I’ve had the two arms and body of a yoked pullover hanging around for ages, but have not managed to put them together into a yoke that fits me in spite of about 5 attempts.  I have blamed this on my weird little bod with its academic stoop, tiny shoulders and middle-aged front droop. But the reality is that I saw simply gorgeous yoked pullovers at Rhinebeck being sported by women who were certainly far from the tall Nordic type with wide straight shoulders. So surely it can be done! I just have to get back on the horse.

Another side effect of my dilettantism is that I have flitted from one project to another and have accumulated a pile of WIPs. Partly this is personality; I have to admit I am a terrible combination of easily distracted mentally restless, undisciplined and perfectionist. Also, many of my WIPs are projects that got to the stage where they needed some concerted effort and time, not projects that I could knit on happily in the dead of night or take when I hang out with my knitting buddies.

But I am slowly coming to the realization that as much as one learns from getting a project underway, one also learns as much, or even more by finishing the project. Finishing synthesizes your new knowledge and puts it in context.

Finishing, for better (it fits and looks good and the yarn suits the pattern), or worse (it is a flop) is very important. Nobody wants the latter of course. But you can only learn through trial and error, through making mistakes. Flops are going to be part of that, indeed flops are necessary to master this discipline and go from having fun with my knitting, to creating a garment that I will wear with pride.

I also am coming to the realization that my WIPs are hanging over me, getting to be a drag. I need to grit my teeth, get over the fear of failure and clear them out in order to start on the next phase of my knitting and crochet life.

So, in the next few months, I want to get to grips with the WIPs. I will move them forward or march them to the frog pond, or whatever. This weekend I spent some time retrieving them and trying to figure out what I wanted to do with them. I am also thinking about my next round of knitting plans and also keeping going on a couple of projects that can be done on automatic pilot for pure relaxation.

My WIPs will be documented here in all their gory detail. Making them public I hope will spur me on to bring them to a resolution!