The knitting of socks has progressed to the level that I can actually help another friend when she is stuck in her sock pattern. This is something of a miracle, given my own querulous and profanity-filled beginnings when socks were knitted inside out, turned to felt by the dog, needles fell out resulting in horrific attempts at picking up stitches, frogging (see? I've even got the terminology) back to the first sad little slip knot stitch. Yet I have managed to knit half a dozen pairs of socks, even one pair for Sonshine and his massive man-feet.
Knitting and knitting patterns have become my new drug of choice.
I look at a sweater in a jewel-bright colourway and think YES, this is for ME! And have come to realise the insidious power of photography in marketing. It's not just the sweater, is it? You ache to BE the person with THAT life-style in the photo.
The current pattern of choice involves a glorious purple and green mix that immediately reminds me of a Next sweater that EVERYONE was wearing in Glasgow in the 90s. I think there must have been a fire sale of them in the Sauchiehall Street store. Oh how I loved that sweater! Look, I even have a photo of me wearing it!
Anyway, I look at the photos in the pattern and realise that the model wears the most stunning colours for her hair colour and that even the few props have been carefully curated to help sell the dream of 'this can be YOU if you JUST BUY THE PATTERN AND KNIT THE SWEATER'.
But as we all know, there is a chasm of time (sometimes an enterknitty lol!) between buying the pattern, buying the yarn and knitting the sweater. And rarely does the final, finished item look as polished as the one on the pattern because, well, you are not a professional knitter, creating for a pattern photo shoot, are you?
Oh that nonchalant pose against the counter-top in a gorgeous cardigan knitted in the colours of an expensive box of chocolates - milk, dark, creamy - the model's creamy skin, the nut brown hair gleaming like a race-horse's flanks, the artless mug of coffee (in contrasting colour mug) clutched in tastefully be-ringed fingers. I suddenly realised, I don't really want that SWEATER, I want that LIFE.
I am, I confess, an advertising executive's DREAM - a permanently unsettled woman with disposable income who thinks that if she keeps trying something new she will eventually alight on the thing that becomes the switch to a happier life.
Perhaps the realisation that a new jumper will not turn me into a new person will be the key, the switch to a happier life?
In the meantime, there's a purple and green sweater to be knitted.
