In photography, the golden hour (sometimes known as magic hour, especially in cinematography) is a period shortly after sunrise or before sunset during which daylight is redder and softer than when the Sun is higher in the sky.I normally don't notice the golden hour. It's ridiculously hot where I live -- upward of 95 degrees Fahrenheit every day for the past two weeks with ridiculous humidity -- so going outside really isn't an option and natural light changes go unnoticed from indoors.
-- Wikipedia
This week, though, I am visiting my Yankee family in the north of the country and it's been beautiful. My aunt and her husband own a lake house and a boat and we've gone out every day, then stayed up late into the night outside.
This has given me the opportunity to not only recognize the golden hour, but utilize its magic picture-editing abilities. It's like nature's Instagram filter. Which may be the most Millennial thing I have ever said (typed?). In any case, I used my father's phone (his camera is better than mine) to snap pics of my current projects.
I'm currently working on two major projects, this being the first cast on. It is the gorgeous Evenstar Shawl by Susan Pandorf, published (but not bought) as part of her Fellowship of the Ring Series. I love this pattern for two reasons:
One: it's really complicated. I know there are some knitters who are content to work big chunky garter cowls until the end of their days. All power to them, truly. But I am not that kind of knitter. I like a challenge. Evenstar has four charts, each more complicated then the last (including chart 3, though it starts off simple). Miraculously, I've only had to go back to fix a mistake twice. This is partially due to my love for yarn surgery though. I've made more mistakes than two.
Two: It's geeky, but not overtly. While I love knitted Daleks and Game of Thrones crest charts as much as the next girl, there is very little chance that I will ever make anything with them. My knitting, while occasionally geeky (re: the Elenor shawl), is geared more toward the traditional. Evenstar is Lord of the Rings themed as well as totally gorgeous.
I haven't been working on Evenstar a lot this week, though, because I'm at a quite repetitive point in the whole process. The current portion of the pattern calls for the same repeating four rows for twenty-four rows. The stitch count at this point is 560 stitches per round. I'm at seventeen out of the twenty-four. It is slow-going right now. Fortunately the rest of this chart looks very complicated -- it will be a good pick-me-up after the slog.
Instead of working on Evenstar, I have been dedicating my soul to this beauty. That's not a fantastic picture -- the golden hour is an hour with long shadows and a propensity for turning things pinker than they are in real life (though that could be the camera), but those are the wicked neat cables of Amy Gunderson's Valentina sweater. That is the front and it's quite near the seventeen inches necessary for beginning armhole decreases (closer now, as this picture was taken two hours ago).
I am studying abroad this fall in the United Kingdom and have been informed by television, movies, books, news reporters, and rumor that the United Kingdom is a very damp place. In my experience, wool has a tendency to keep a fair amount of moisture out. It also stays warm even when it's wet, which will be good considering I will be there through December (I actually get back two days before Christmas). As such, I needed a hardy wool sweater and I knew just the yarn for it.
Two years ago, my mother told me that if I saved enough money for airfare to Éire (it's a terrible joke; I regret nothing), she would take me there as a high school graduation / eighteenth birthday present. I scrimped, saved, bought a $900 plane ticket, and had my first ever alcohol buzz in a hotel bar in Galway the day before my eighteenth birthday. With my mum. I'm a rebel.
Anyway, we also visited the Aran Sweater Market on Inis Mór while we were in Ireland. Now, I know that the whole thing about Aran fisherman being identified by their clan cable pattern is basically baloney. But, even if its origins are slightly fraudulent, the practice of Aran knitting has become a part of knitting culture and not to its detriment. Aran cabling is gorgeous. So, I bought a sweater's worth of 100% Irish wool and it has been sitting in my stash ever since.
Not sitting aimlessly in my stash, I assure you. I would bring it out, cast on for a sweater, then it wouldn't work out because I never gauge anything and, as such, things wouldn't be the size they were supposed to be. So I would frog my progress and throw the yarn back in the stash in frustration. Having decided I needed a sturdy wool sweater for England, however, I decided that I would work through my issues and actually make a sweater with this yarn. Valentina was the last in a long list of Ravelry patterns that I looked at and boy, am I glad I kept looking and didn't settle for my second choice, which I wasn't totally happy with.
Valentina is gorgeous, becomes rather simple as you go, and is fairly easy to adjust to your shape. I even made a swatch (this shows I've matured) and it definitely helped. I was slightly worried that it was too wide (a recurring problem with this yarn) but I trusted the swatch and once I got to the cables, the width tightened right up. It occurs to me that this might have been the problem with previous attempts at sweaters, but I'm going to ignore that.
The front is currently on the needles up there. The back is finished and blocked (to make sure I'd done everything right), but I was in a hurry when packing my knitting on travel day and it did not make the finish line. So, once the front is done I will be able to start the sleeves and once I get back home, it will probably be only a couple days to a week for the sweater to be completely totally done.
There will not be modeled pictures. At least not ones taken during the golden hour. It is August. It is hot.
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