Ripping Yarns

My excuse is that I was really bored.

I am, by nature, a collector - a hoarder, even. Whether it's physical things like fabric, books and make up, or invisible things like facts about tea, Japanese swordmanship, or obscure British science fiction shows of the past forty years, if I have a thing, I want ALL OF THE THINGS.

This explains why I now own so much yarn. So. Much. Yarn.

This does not explain why, since I own ALL THE YARN, I decided to photograph it (Perhaps I should blame Ravelry?). With my resident horde of stuffed toys (I don't think I can blame Ravelry for that).

Sirdar Big Softie, modelled by Randolph

 I'm over halfway through knitting this into a blanket (which shows how long ago I took these photos!) - it's a lovely fat cabled pattern from The Gentle Art of Knitting. The original pattern called for Blue Sky Alpaca Bulky - Big Softie is a nice alternative, especially at under £3 a ball instead of around £10. I miscalculated slightly, forgetting that the Blue Sky was 100g skeins and Big Softie is 50g balls, but alpaca must be heavy as I don't think I'm going to come up very short (if I come up short at all). It's very interesting knitting with 15mm needles, though! I shall let you know how this works out.

Big Softie Collar, modelled by Randolph

 My first project with the Big Softie, though, was this collar. I like the yarn-over pattern, but it didn't really work out the way the one in the picture did! I think I could have done with much larger needles. If I run out of yarn for the blanket, I may well end up frogging it - if not, it needs a button to be really useful.

Fyberspates Scrumptious DK/Worsted 'Plum', modelled by Tabby

Fyberspates Scrumptious DK/Worsted in Purple, modelled by Moonlight

 This stuff is glorious. Glorious. It's soft without being tickly, smooth, but not slippery, thick and squishy without being bulky. The plum will become a Victoriana ruffly collar, with buttons, the purple I haven't decided yet. I've since also acquired three skeins of Cherry, which is going to become what I've taken to calling my Night Circus scarf

Fyberspates Scrumptious Lace in Oyster, modelled by Legs

 The wonderful thing about the Scrumptious skeins is that they are quite large - it looks like there's enough yardage on this to make a medium sized lace shawl. I haven't really done any lace knitting yet (Not that I need much help making holes!) so I'm quite excited about this.

Cygnet Superwash Wool, modelled by Tiny

 Sometimes, you just need boring old bog-standard merino Superwash. I'm actually working on something with this (And a few accent colours) for a present, which has lead me to believe that EVERYTHING is better in brioche stitch.

Austermann Merino Lace, modelled by Hitsuji-kun

 In my defence, I had gone in specifically to buy lace weight yarn. I had really wanted red, black, or purple, and all they had was the Oyster above - which I liked, but didn't love. And then there were these babies, all laid out in an old suitcase.

I couldn't decide, so I got one in every colour!

Sirdar Balmoral and King Cole Merino Blend DK, modelled by Durango

 I'm still undecided about this lot. The Balmoral was in the sale, and it's a nice strong (if not terribly soft, not terribly scratchy either) wool blend with alpaca and silk. I have twenty balls - ten black, five grey and five natural/beige/biscuit/whatever you call this - and then I picked up two balls of the pink DK as a contrast with the idea that I would try out the School Colours blanket from The Gentle Art of Knitting. It's a clever design where you knit five scarves, sew them together, and they become a blanket.

The problem with this immediately became you knit five scarves. Do you remember the pink bamboo scarf I started at the end of July? Well, it's now the end of September and I think I'm about three quarters done. If one scarf takes me three months - in quite a simple pattern, and a narrow one at that, the School Colours scarves are wide moss stitch - it will take me years to complete this blanket.

And yet, it's not quite soft enough that I want to knit garments from it. I'm thinking of sitting down with a stitch dictionary and doing sampler squares, which I can finish in a week at most, to sew together instead of the long tedious slog that goes into making a scarf. What do you think?

Debbie Bliss Alpaca Silk Aran, modelled by Lucitania

 Readers, this is my favourite yarn ever.

It's being discontinued, and given it's reputation this seems warranted (Like many Debbie Bliss yarns, it seems, it's underspun, easy to knit through, slippery, sheds heavily, is too expensive for the yardage, stretches, and the darker colours are not colour fast) but all the same, it's like knitting with unicorn hair and clouds. Although Lucitania is sat with the pink, aubergine and lilac in the photo, I also have some bright red and some 'sand', which is a pale gold. I couldn't resist stocking up.

I've heard many of the problems can be fixed by washing it before you start, so we'll see how I get on.

Sublime Yarns Chunky Merino Tweed, modelled by Capybara-san 

 The flecks of colour in this are what really drew me to it - that, and it knits up solid unless you use fairly large needles. I have a half-baked plan to make button-up ankle cuffs in a nice dense stitch - something like moss stitch - for winter days when I'm walking to work in pumps and a skirt. But which colour do I use?!

Debbie Bliss Pure Silk, modelled by Alfred and Khan

 (Alfred and Khan are twins, you know, even though I got them eighteen months apart in two different second-hand venues. So peculiar!)

This was a little more of an impulse buy than most of what I have (And that's saying something!) - they had just these six skeins left, it was in the sale, stuff happened, okay, I can't be held responsible for my actions. The six skeins of Apricot not pictured, however, were purchased in cold blood and I take full responsibility for my forthcoming apricot silk lace gloves. The pink? Still not sure!

Sirdar Snuggly Smiley Stripes DK, modelled by Spot

 It's called 'Smiley Stripes', and it's bamboo-wool, and... just look at it, don't you feel happier already?

I also haven't decided what I'm going to make with this, but I'm thinking mittens!

King Cole Bamboo Cotton, modelled by Rabbit

 I have far too much of this. I already mentioned that I want to make the Sea Glass Chevron scarf from The Gentle Art of Knitting - I've since rethought the colours, bought an extra ball of white and the baby pink, so it'll be white with four contrast stripes.

And then I'll still have four three-quarter full balls and a whole extra ball of purple! It's a good thing I love knitting with bamboo. Everyone will be getting pink face cloths for Christmas, I think.

Princess Lamswool/Angora, modelled by Moonlight

 It was bound to happen - vintage yarn!

I found this at the charity shop, and I think I have just about enough here for a bandanna sized lace scarf (Of which I have already found a few patterns!) so - not bad for 50p!

Sirdar Flirt, modelled by Percival

And finally, here is my next project! There's a theme to these colours, although you may not spot it (Here's a hint - they're worn by certain linked organisations, and these colours are sometimes named after them because of it) and I'm going to be knitting Dalek face cloths for two very special people taking a very special journey.

Because obviously what you do to show your unwavering support for someone is knit them a Dalek face cloth. EXFOLIATE!!!

Aside from those I've mentioned as picking up in extra colourways, I've also got some suspicious looking cranberry baby alpaca squirrelled away (I'm knitting a lace detail twinset from Sensuous Knits - or at least that was my plan, before I discovered that wet alpaca smells an awful lot like, well, wet dog. Not sure if want) because it was far too expensive to admit to having bought, and three balls of Rowan Galaxy - a bichrome gradient dye with sequins! I have my eye on the Life On The Open Wave scarf from The Gentle Art of Knitting with this one, so at least I bought it with a project in mind this time.

Well, I bought the second two balls with a project in mind, that's got to count for something, right?

The Fashion Industry Hates Everyone Equally

I intended to keep this blog for crafty-things, but unfortunately my crafty-things of choice are textile based, which means that at some point, inevitably, I was going to crash into 'Fashion'

I follow a lot of Retro/Vintage and Alternative fashion blogs, because aside from historical costuming that's the kind of aesthetic I like and cultivate in the way I dress, rather than most of the styles in glossy trendy magazines. Unfortunately, this means that I also encounter an awful lot of what I am struggling to find a better phrase for than Everything Is Easier For Thin People.

It's a very simple idea. You can't find clothes that fit when you go shopping, because everything is designed for thin people. Styles to suit your figure aren't popular, because everything is designed for thin people. And this runs over into lots of other things too. Make up of the right shades doesn't exist because everything is designed for a small minority of complexions. Shops don't carry the right bra sizes because everything is designed around a certain range of sizes. Trousers and skirts come in at all the wrong lengths because everything is designed for certain heights.

My point here, and this is important, is that really they are saying two things. One - clothes on the high street are designed and made with a very narrow range of shapes, sizes and appearances in mind, making it difficult for people who are not like this ideal. This is totally and unashamedly true.

The second point, however, is that this very narrow range of shapes, sizes and appearances are - more or less - thin people. And thus life must be easy for them. Neither of those statements are true.

Here's the embarrassing part where I lay out my vital statistics - which, being a seamstress, I know to a level of intimacy most people never have to articulate. In well fitting underwear, I'm more or less 31" - 26"- 35" - that's 79 - 66 - 89 in centimetres - comfortable but without ease, and variable depending on the time of the month and the time of the year. With the right bra, given the right time of the month to fill it out, I can maybe hit 31 1/2", without underwear I'm a comfortable 30 1/2". Right now I'm at the low end of my waist measurement as I tend to gain weight over winter, so by May I'll be an easy 27", although at any time I can lace down with a corset to about a 24"-25" if I feel like it. My bicep measurement is 10"/25.5cm and my thigh is 19"/48cm - I'm lean on top and toned rather than bulky on the bottom. My waist sits high, and I'm muscled in my lower body in a way that I'm not in my upper - but not as much as I used to be - and the bust measurement owes more to my broad shoulders and rib cage than my breasts. Speaking of underwear, I usually wear a 30A in bras, which varies in suitability depending on cut and style. I'm 5'5 3/4" in my stocking soles, and thus an easy 5'6" even in flats, I have a 28" inside leg, and it's 42" from waist to ground with no shoes on. That's 3'6", which means the bottom half of my body makes up a fraction more than 3/5ths of my total height - I have very, very long legs. I have 25.5cm feet which translates into somewhere between a 6 and a 7 in shoes (UK sizes), depending on style and brand. I wear 7" gloves and 6" bracelets and my fingers are proportionally short for my hands. In reasonable light, you can always see my collar bones and shoulder blades - if I roll my shoulders and head forwards, you can count my vertebrae without touching, and on a normal in-breath (Not a big suck-your-breath in, just normal breathing) it's possible to count the ribs on my flanks from a distance of maybe seven or eight paces. I have seen pictures of arms, shoulders, backs, ribcages that resemble mine, could belong to me, on pro-anorexia blogs, where they are clearly the largest people on the page but is still quite possibly the most disturbing thing I have ever encountered in my entire life.

I am officially Very Thin. Conveniently, I also share several other characteristics with super models - those of having Long Legs and Small Breasts.

I am also waiting for this magical world where everything has been designed for me to appear.

((At this point it always pays to point out that I eat like a horse and exercise lightly. I'm not unhealthy-thin and I certainly don't diet or dive for the gym in order to make myself look the way I do. My sister is the same, my mother was the same when she was my age, and so was my grandmother. It's just the way we roll. I'm looking forward to bulking up as I age and (hopefully) have babies, as seems to be the way.))

I could go into great detail about what it's like, for me, trying to go shopping for clothes and shoes, but I won't. Just, trust me, it would sound just as tedious and soul-destroying as the experiences you have. Just like you, I've finally found the one manufacturer of bras that will do, even if they don't really fit, and I stick with them because hunting is hard. Just like you, I take three different sizes of the same garment into the fitting room only to discover that none of them fit. Just like you, I make do with things that fit here, or fit there, but are too large here or strain over that part because I need some clothes. Just like you, I lust over fashion pictures of things I simple know I will never, ever be able to wear, and am resigned to the fact that certain items are simply never going to be mine, and that many others will never be mine without a long, physically and financially draining search. Just like you, there are some brands I know fit me that little bit better, are that little bit closer to perfect, but the price tags make me cringe. Just like you, I stand in front of the racks on the high street and wonder whether I really like this enough to ask the shop assistant if they have what I think is my size, because it's not on the rack, and decide not to, because what if they don't have it, what if they don't even make that size, what if the shop assistant judges me because of the size of clothing I wear? Do I really want to deal with that? Do I really want it enough to face up to how that makes me feel about myself?

Maybe, just like me, your heart sinks when someone announces that their new lingerie line will be "For women of all shapes and sizes!" because from your experience, that means more plus-sizes, and you'll still drop well off the bottom end of the scale. Maybe, just like me, people say "I hate you, you're so skinny!" in a jovial tone and expect you to be flattered, or feel they are entitled to tell you you have an eating disorder or are clearly on a diet when neither is true. Maybe, just like me, you feel excluded from rallying cries for body-positive-thinking, because if real women have curves then you're not a real woman, because when people say "this is fake, you are real" you look like the 'fake' picture they're pointing at, because it feels like they celebrate every body type except yours. Maybe, just like me, people tell you "But you can wear anything" and you don't have the courage to tell them it's not true, because you look like the people in the magazines - never mind that the people in the magazines are held into their clothes by body tape and pins and bulldog clips, never mind that celebrities have all of their clothes tailored to fit, and yeah, maybe you could wear anything that the people in the magazines wore if you had thousands of pounds to drop on each individual garment. But lets face it, with enough money, anybody could.

The idealised size and shape the high street fashion industry caters to is not thin people. It's not any people. It's a fictional, idealised statistical average. It fits nobody. I am not that person any more than you are. I don't have it any easier than you do. The fashion industry does not love me.

I am not your enemy. They are.