What next? What next? [KC]

Having finished the stripalicious jezz (yes yes, picture coming, coming dear) I had planned to make another colourful and delightful project, vaguely inspired by pretty Chinese jackets as seen in Flying Daggers et al. I had all the details planned out. I had the yarn, too, four colours that go together spectacularly well (blue, purple, gold and silver; but nice subtle blue and purple, I promise). I was really looking forward to that. Then I swatched it, and damn, but the silvery cotton is waaaay too heavy to go with the others. Damndamndamn. So i started thinking about a nice little black lacy thing that had also been simmering in the back of my head, with clever detachable funfur collar. But when I started swatching it up, well, it's nice and all, but it just seems so three years ago darling, sorry... so I mentally changed the style completely, keeping the lacy stitches but making a nice trendy wrap cardigan. Ooh, now that's something.

But somewhere along the line I'd gotten much more excited by the idea of a 'ballerina aran' (as will be featured in Vogue Knitting's spring/summer edition; how next season!) and now that's what I want to do. Well, sort of; I ditched the ballerina styling for a long tunic, but kept the lightweight, sexy concept. It will be a beautifully detailed sweater/dress with sexy cutout bits to keep Beloved happy (he's always whining that I should do sexy knitting). In some ways I see this as the descendant of my infamous brown jersey. Which I still love, people, so be nice. But this will be less sloppy, much better finished and, well, a lot more trendy and sexy. I hope.

And plus I have advance plans for those blue and purple cottons - one a sexy lace wrap (as above), one a fairly simple, soft, textured jezz. I'm trying to think of a way to update the shaping or something of the textured item; I keep coming up with things, but really, it's a very soft, light fabric, I can't do clever structured jackets or anything. So will keep pondering for a while.

In the meantime, Designing Knitwear arrived from Amazon this morning - fantastic book! How have I lived without it so long? Full of useful info and inspiration. Completely unlike the Knitting Stitch Bible, which also arrived, and will be sent back pronto. A whole book with hundreds of stitches, and only one of them is not desperately boring. Admittedly that one is stupendous; but still - one! Out of hundreds!

Sigh. Sorry to be so boringly knittified - hence the [Knitting Content] code above; watch out for it in future posts. I had a pretty quiet weekend, see. Beloved working (mostly night shifts, but on Saturday he kicked off with a final shift at Coffee, Cake and Kink, leaving him just enough time to come home for supper before 12 hours at Sky. Ouch), so I was home alone, and very damn lazy. I mean there were all these great movies on TV. (ET! Grease! Austin Powers!) And me with swatching to do.

Actually I did do two non-knitting things: first, on Friday, we donned our capes and masks and went to do the mystery shopping thang at Leicester Square. I have to report that while the movie was great (The Incredibles - more masks and a handful of capes; definitely the best Pixar yet, and you know that's high praise indeed), the cinema experience was terrible on a number of levels. So we complained, and complaints were more-or-less dealt with; but Beloved was so incensed, he could not resist telling the manager that 'I will tell all my friends not to come here, and - and - this will have repercussions beyond tonight!' Sigh. Poor dear loves power so. Not so hot at maintaining cover, though.

And on Saturday I went to get my dad a computer (£199! bargain!) and picked up a little something for myself. So, when Beloved wakes up and plugs it in for me (because I'm lazy), I will be playing with my shiny new printer/scanner/copier. Yeeha! It's so little and cute! And I can scan knitting designs and stuff! ...Oh, I guess that is a knitting thing after all... Right, so I did one non-knitting thing this weekend. That's still something.