I’ve been knitting for about seven years and it’s taken almost that whole time to find a designer that I love. I have other designers that I really like and that produce items that for the most part I find very pretty or interesting. Often I like some of the things that a designer puts out without liking everything. A specific cardi or a pair of socks might catch my attention. I might even be able to recognize a designer’s work without really wanting to knit the item.
And then this year I started knitting Stephen West items. First it was just ine Boneyard shawl, and then another.
The Boneyards and the start of the addiction. Mine is the purple. The green is for my Grandmother. Both yarns are from Indigodragonfly.
Then I started looking at other things he has designed and I was hooked. I would easily put almost any other knitting aside to work on something that he has designed. I am fascinated by how he combines simplicity and intrigue to produce patterns that look beautiful and are generally very easy to knit. So easy, in fact, that I almost always reach a point in all the projects that I start to think ‘please let this end soon’ because it just keeps going (and going and going). But it never fails that I too just keep going and eventually I have a finished product that I love. So far this calender year I have produced 2 Boneyard shawls (one for me and one for my Grandmother), two Urbanas (one small version for my Dad, and a super sized one for me that still needs a crocheted edge), a Clockwork scarf, an earth & sky, a pogona, and a Windcheif. That’s eight items. That can’t be normal. It’s certainly not normal for me.
Add to that a Flamboyan, a Herbivore, and another Windchief all in my YOP list and Daybreak, Loxely, Spectra, the desire to make a second clockwork in more distinct colours so the final product is less blended and at least one more (but probably two) Earth & Sky shawls, one for me and one for a gift and that brings the final total to 17?!?!?!? I’m insane.
Stephen West in clearly my knitting earworm. He’s the designer that’s stuck in my brain and is playing on a continuous loop. It’s the all Stephen West all the time show happening in my knitting life and really I’m okay with that. A knitter can never have too many shawls and wraps. And if the man ever starts producing socks I’m really screwed.
(BTW – my husband has said that a knitting earworm would technically be a stitchworm. So there you have it. Stephen West is my stitchworm.)
whendidibecomeaknitter 