WIP Wednesday: The Quilt of Dooooooooooooooom

Hooray it’s WIP Wednesday again which as well as being delightfully alliterative lets me prove to all of us, and myself, that I do occasionally create things and don’t just sit about eating biscuits and muttering. So thank you again to Tami from Tami’s Amis and if you want to see who else is taking part (and how much better their stuff is than mine, natch) then get on over to her blog.

Firstly though, I’d like to share with you my relief that my swap package arrived with its recipient – she is blogging about it on her blog here, go and look, and I am so pleased she likes it, because this was my first swap and I was terrified I would do it wrong. So all is well and I am very pleased indeed that imaginethatanid likes what I bought her, even though I read on her blog that she lives within visiting distance of the Wollmeise shop* (yes!) and was nearly paralysed with stage fright, thinking, there is nothing I can give to someone who has the Wollmeise shop on their doorstep, I might as well stuff a few balls of fun fur in an Asda carrier bag and go and weep in a corner. But all is well so hooray!

Admire my juxtaposition of Marcus Aurelius's meditations with Bridget Jones. I am postmodern, postfeminist and eclectic. Go me

Now onto WIPs. Firstly, this is my pixie-hat-in-progress, using the beautiful Manos del Uruguay I myself got from Xtiand in the Blog Hub swap, and the Woolly Wormhead pattern I won from Gradschoolknitter (I’ve had quite a lucky week, haven’t I?). This is its second incarnation, because my first attempt seemed to be starting out quite big, so I have gone down a needle size and am now knitting the small size and it seems fine (I am hoping it won’t look like one of those things you put on top of Innocent smoothies when it is finished). The Manos is beautiful and I particularly like the depth of colour. It’s a quick, easy pattern, but with enough going on to keep you interested, and I’m enjoying knitting it. Not like the soul-sucking quilt of doom:

It will kill me. It will kill me dead

This quilt has not been easy. It has involved blood. It has involved cutting out 324 identical squares. It has involved pulling a buttock muscle leaning over the cutting board in a way that convinced me I had developed a deep vein thrombosis (I hadn’t developed a deep vein thrombosis). And then in my weakened state, cross eyed from cutting *&%@@ blue strips, I went into the garden to put some nuts out for the squirrel and something bit me eight times on my foot. Eight times! I know it is a stretch to blame the quilt for that, but sod it I am going to. I am now about a quarter of the way through piecing it and if I actually like it when I finish it you must forget this rant, and we will pretend I made it with Love and filled it right up to its adorable brim with Positive Karma.

Does my bum look big in this? Yes, it looks monstrous but directional

And this is my almost-WIP. I am going to make the skirt on the right. I have got as far as cutting it out and will have a crack at it as soon as I have burnt the quilt and danced a jig on the ashes finished the quilt carefully and competently. I don’t think it will be complicated: I do think it will be unwearable, as I have seen it in the shop and it made the mannequin look like the Venus of Willendorf. Now, I am quite a bit bigger than the mannequin was, and although obviously I admire the Venus of Willendorf from a feminist perspective I am not quite evolved enough that I can take her as a fashion icon. Anyway I will make it, and we will see how rough I look. Doesn’t that sound fun? Watch this space!

* For those of you non-Ravelry-obsessed people, Wollmeise is the Sine Qua Non of Yarn. It is the Ultimate. It is as desirable and as difficult to get as the Hermès Birkin bag. I believe it changes hands for huge amounts of money and possibly firstborn children on Ebay. No wars have yet been started over a skein of Wollmeise Sockenwolle but, well. It’s a narrow line.