Don’t get me wrong— I love heavily textured knits, ropey cables, delicate lace. I can lose myself working a complex, twisting cable pattern, or knit happily for hours, entranced as intricate lace patterns develop on my needles. Sometimes, the focus and concentration required to knit cables or lace is exactly what I need to quiet my brain and restore balance in my busy life.
But sometimes, what I really need is, well, simple. Simple stitches, simple knits, simple shapes.
Like right now, these days, these trying times. So on this beautiful sunny September Sunday, the first day of autumn, I have three wonderfully simple knits to occupy my hands, and my head.
First is Waterbound, the linen stitch wrap I have been carrying around all summer, knitting into it bits of Lake Champlain, various reservoirs, a little ocean, and whatever other bodies of water we have visited these past few weeks. But I can knit a little of the beautiful blue September sky into it today, too.
Waterbound, a Yarndance original linen stitch wrap worked in several shades of Koigu KPPPM
And socks, of course. A couple of weeks ago, my sister-in-law gave me a two of skeins of LadyDyeYarns sock yarn, and now I have nearly three-quarters of a pair of socks. Simple socks. Plain vanilla—not my favorite kind of ice cream, but definitely my favorite kind of socks!
The joy of socks… Based on the Yankee Knitter Classic Socks pattern, in LadyDyeYarns superwash fingering weight yarn
And finally, another wrap. A very dear friend had not one, but two! knee replacement surgeries this summer. I spent weeks trying to find the perfect knitting project to give her, to help while away the hours of rest and recovery. Finally, I chose the most simple of wraps, the Swath Wrap (a free pattern from Purl Soho), worked in their gorgeous Flax Down and Linen Quill yarns. For Annie, I chose the Rose Granite colorway. For myself (because then we could each knit a wrap in tandem across the miles) I chose the High Tide colorway.
Purl Soho’s Swath Wrap, in Flax Down and Linen Quill, colorway High Tide
Besides all being delightfully simple knits, I realize these three projects currently on my needles share another important characteristic—they are all basically blue. Although, in the immortal words of glass artist Dale Chihuly, “I never met a color I didn’t like,” there is just something about blue that speaks to the very center of my soul. That these three projects, right now, are all blue, did not happen by conscious design on my part. But I doubt it’s merely happy coincidence, either.
