Some More Of My Handiwork

One of the things that I do to keep my mind occupied when I am very depressed is knitting. I have often talked about what I am working on at the time on this blog and I thought that I would show you what I have done over the last couple of days.

I had a couple of balls of wool left over from a cardigan that I have just made and thought that it would be nice to have a hat. I wanted a simple beanie hat but I couldn't find a free pattern for a hat I liked on the Internet so I decided to see if I could work out something for myself. And this is the result.

As the hat had used less than one of the balls that I had left I decided to knit a second hat. This is it. One of the beautiful aspects of this wool is that no two balls are the same, so my two hats are quite different in appearance.

The cardigan that I knitted is an incredible array of colours and I have nicknamed it my 'coat of many colours'. The predominant colours are red and blue, but there are many others too including yellow, green, purple and pink.

Here are the two hats side by side. The first one I knitted is on the right and has blue as a more predominant colour, while the second hat, on the left in this picture, is more obviously red.

The difference in the hats when viewed together is quite striking and yet, when viewed separately, they don't look that different.

It is the complexity of knitting yarns like this one that make knitting such an enjoyable pastime for me. Having knitted practically all my life, the thing that I appreciate most these days is the diverse nature of the knitting yarns available today. Such a choice, and range, was unheard of when I was younger, and I believe that it is this choice that I have, plus the exciting range of patterns available, that has meant that knitting has become such a lifeline for me.

However, sometimes I need a change from knitting, not least because I have quite bad osteo-arthritis in the index finger of my left hand and sometimes the pain can become so bad that knitting becomes very difficult. I am having problems at the moment, so yesterday I started work on a cross stitch sampler. It is of African animals and will provide me with a reminder of the time that I spent in a game reserve in South Africa when I went to stay with my aunt (she is my Dad's twin sister and my godmother and has lived in South Africa most of her life) shortly after my husband died.

The trouble with a project like this is that it takes a lot longer to complete than knitting a cardigan or a jumper. But the satisfaction when it is completed will be just as great and when framed will provide me with a permanent reminder of something that I am sure that I will never be able to do again. And yes, I did see all of these animals and many more besides.