Beatnik Beats

[With apologies to Jack Kerouac and other Beat types]

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked apart from some damn fine knitwear.

In the bar I told Dean, ‘Hell, man, I know very well you didn’t come to me only to want to become a knitter, and after all what do I really know about it except that you’ve got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict, and that circular needles are probably easier on the wrists.’

I left behind a big half-finished shawl, folded back my comfortable home sheets for the last time early one morning, and left. I was on the road again, this time with a big, red cabled sweater to keep me company in planes, rattling trains, and pick-up trucks as I moved from place to place. Somewhere along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, Estonian lace knitting, everything; somewhere along the line the purl would be handed to me.

I finished Beatnik in Santa Margherita, a little town by the sea way out west. Late at night, I dunked it in the kitchen sink, and hung it on the radiator, as there was no other way a great, thick thing like that was ever going to dry otherwise. The radiator branded a ridge across the neckband where I wedged it in place. I took some awkward selfies on a day too warm to wear it.

I dug the sweater. It's the kind of sweater that, even though you’re on the road alone and far from home with only five Euros and three stitch-markers in your pocket, will wrap itself around you, and make you warm: wool-warm and red-happy.

On the road again

I am heading off for a very brief spell in Genoa to do some much needed research. People often express envy that my PhD demands trips to Italy, but I tend to get unduly stressed out about these visits. I find research a rather lonely business at the best of times, and this anxiety is amplified when in an unfamiliar place where I am compelled to communicate in my second language. 

One thing that I do enjoy about the process, though, is the long stretches of knitting time it affords, while in transit, and as a substitute for social contact *self-pitying sniff*. This time I shall be turning the above purple perfection into Elphaba (pattern here on Ravelry, beautiful project photo here), a lightweight pullover inspired by the so-called Wicked Witch of the West... that might be why I said I was going for a spell in Genoa. Ahem. If I ever started dyeing yarn (which, incidentally, I have been thinking of experimenting with), one of my colours would definitely be 'Bad Pun Blush'. 

'I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each'

Sometimes I think I spend longer dreaming about what to knit while travelling than I do actually travelling. I shall be spending about nine hours on trains over the next few days (I'm grateful that there will be any trains for me to take - I didn't think I was going to make it home this holiday with the possible strike), and so for most of today my thoughts flitted from wherever they were supposed to be focussed to prospective knittish ways to fill this time.

When I really start thinking about matching yarns and patterns, it can become quite an involved imaginative voyage. I had previously seen the green of the yarn above as summer shoots and juicy grass, but suddenly it transformed before my eyes from leaves under the sun to fronds under the water, and I knew I wanted to make a Laminaria. Lots of knitters seem to endow yarn with the faculty for reason ('it hasn't decided what it wants to be yet'), which seems ridiculous until you experience that moment of epiphany, when a clear decision emerges as if by magic from a mire of uncertainty. This one was accompanied by mermaids swimming through the underwater kingdom I was about to create, much like this old Levis advert, but with more knitting.

What's that? You want another gratuitous swift-in-motion shot? Oh, ok, if you insist. 

Ah Jonathan...

Train in Vain

The journey time between Edinburgh and Cambridge is about four and a half hours; I'm sure I spend longer than that every time pondering what to knit on the train. I had thought I would start this, in this superwash merino which sprung into my hands the last time I was in the K1 Cave of Temptation, thus ending my long quest for a black cardigan.

I've been having some trouble getting gauge, though, so I think instead I might make this with all my leftover yarn from Broderie.

Thanks to my charming friend at the Book Festival, I did briefly consider not knitting at all, and just reading a real, paper book. But, really, the lacunae in my shawlette collection are too serious not to address.