WIP Wednesday: Food For Thought

Well, it's WIP Wednesday again (thanks to Tami of Tami's Amis!) so I am going to show you my WIPS. But first I'm going to make you wade through an allegory. One of my favourite books In The World is The Star-Bellied Sneetches by Dr Seuss. It is an instructive tale of two different kinds of sneetches, one who had bellies with stars, and the plain-bellied sneetches who had none upon thars (I know thars isn’t a word. I am quoting). Anyway, obviously the plain-bellied sneetches want nothing more than to have stars on their bellies too, so someone invents a machine and they all get them, and for about 5 minutes there they are, right at the absolute apex of fashion, and then they have exactly the same effect on belly stars as Daniella Westbrook did on Burberry. So someone invents a machine for the star-bellied sneetches to be de-starred, as stars are now so far beyond the pale they couldn’t get editorial in My Weekly never mind Vogue, and it all ends up getting quite confused, and in the end some of the sneetches have stars and some don’t. And at that point they all decide that actually it doesn’t matter who had stars originally and who has them now – because both types of Sneech belly are equally valid, and one is not better than another. Hooray!

This has not yet happened with knitters and crocheters. Oh, we have a semblance of co-operation – after all, there are some of us who do both. We all know the right kinds of things to say. Yes! Knitters say, isn’t crochet actually very versatile and of course you can do cables. And crocheters say, no it isn’t really silly wrestling all those stitches on knitting needles it’s probably actually very easy when you’ve got the hang of it. But these are mere words; there is still a distrust there. Crocheters are really thinking, why would you spend all that time knitting holes into something when you could crochet a lacy thing in 5 minutes, and knitters are really thinking, oh yes we can see you pretending it’s possible to crochet a sweater with drape when really all you want to make is a starched doily and a waistcoat out of granny squares.

Well, I don’t want to fan those flames. All I can do is present to you my experience. This is my still half-finished Citron, which now has an unexpected number of stitches on the needles which I must deal with before proceeding, as if things weren’t bad enough. I am half way through the fifth repeat and am aiming to do six.

Aeons seem to have passed while I have been knitting this. Forests have risen and fallen. The elves have gone to the Western Isles and precipitated the Dominion of Man. Seas lap the rocky shoreline forming sand. I must shift from buttock to buttock to avoid forming pressure sores. Liquids are given intravenously while my hands, joints knotted from the frantic knitting of Laceweight on Denise Needles, twitch and jerk like moribund spiders.

And this is my Sezession I shawl. I had to stand on tiptoe to get it all in the photograph.

Half an hour in front of Judge Judy and a bit more in front of Three In A Bed. I rest my case.

I shall finish the Sezession I shawl and I shall take stock. Emotional stock. It will be instructive.