Kusha Kusha Progress

I'm in the home stretch of the Kusha Kusha scarf, a project that is so aesthetically pleasing to me on so many process levels that I don't so much want to be finished knitting it. 

But wait, when the knitting is finished, it must be fulled/felted and that's a whole other delight, one that involves transformation, serendipity....ahhh, a total bliss project.

Never mind that the knitting is like knitting with hair, that with this fine a yarn and the needle size, it's difficult to discern just which side of the stockinette is knit and which purl. That at least once I picked it up and got it wrong and so have a section of reverse stockinette. Yes, never mind - felting heals such things.  And if not, it's really okay. The personality of this scarf is so plastic and whimsical and  unconventional it can handle it, act like a bit of reverse stockinette was intended from the beginning.

On a serious note, even before the earthquake and tsunami, I had been thinking a lot about Japan lately, about how much there is the Japanese influence on my fiber art. Perhaps not so much in design, but in the materials I work with - my favorite yarns,  SAORI weaving, the concept of wabi-sabi I often ponder. 

So as I began the Kusha Kusha with Habu Textiles yarn, and am in the beginning my SAORI journey, and am making textile jewelry with Noro yarns, my thoughts have been of gratitude that these things have come into my life, how much deep joy I have in working with the textures and colors, the freeing process of SAORI.  Gratitude to the Japanese artists who have created them.  Those have been my thoughts for awhile, and so I feel connected in a more personal way to the deep sadness over the terrible, incomprehensible devastation that has come to Japan.

May healing begin.

Wurm done, Kusha Kusha begun

 Finished Wurm! It's a funny-looking hat and looks funny on me, but oh, it's soft and warm and I'll bet I wear it next winter for sure.  Then maybe I'll take a picture of it in use. For now:

And yup. I've been sucked right into another Yarn Harlot project.  Wouldn't you know, the very day I wrote about wising up to the fact that I love reading about Stephanie's projects but don't find them the sort of projects that hold my interest...the very day, she wrote about starting a project which uses Habu Textiles' silk stainless steel yarn.

I have been intrigued with this yarn ever since I saw it in a project featured in Living Crafts Summer '09 issue.   Scroll down a bit on that page and you can see a thumbnail and brief description of the beaded scarf-necklace.  So when Martha at RiverWools got in some Habu, I picked up some of the silk stainless steel.  I never got any farther than playing around with it and making this.

So I've started a Kusha Kusha Scarf which uses this fine, fine yarn along with a fine, fine strand of merino wool. 2/3 of it uses both yarns and gets felted.  I love this. But I'm telling myself I won't be making the Kusha sweater YH wrote about. I won't.







 

Tawdry...

...that's the working name for a new knitted bracelet design I'm playing with.

Looks like a bit of torn fishnet stocking.

Ingredients for Tawdry:
Habu Textiles interesting silk & stainless steel yarn
vintage plastic UltraKraft buttons