It's an art!

Speaking of art and craft and manufactured handmade series of things (yes, we were speaking of those, in my own head anyways).... Because I am nothing if not easily amused by 'meta' stuff, or, um, era-commentary, let's say, I bought something today: one of these.

The 842, to be precise. See, I am broke, so I had to pick a high number to spend less on it -- check the formula and you'll see what I mean. This one seemed more appealing than most possibilities though, because it's all 2s. 2x2x2-2x2-2, is what it is. I like that in a number.

Unrelatedly, I picked up from where I had stashed it a happenstance, unfinished project based on yarn, and finished it!

I'd started making a large swatch in seed stitch with this thick (8mm needles) pure acrylic yarn I bought, the day I bought it. Which was some time last year, but please spare me; I am slow.

When I had taken the needle and slid it away from the knitting to start unraveling what was, after all, only a warm-up tryout knit, I'd noticed how the knitting curved to form a perfect hemisphere, and how gorgeous the knitted seed stitch band looked.

The texture and stitch definition was just... eye-catching. I decided then and there that I should try to make it a necklace, a neck-plate-ish thing like I've seen in museums except you know, in yarn and not in bronze.

I did think, though, that it would require something more than what I had so far, beads to weight it down and give it a more refined shape perhaps, something to put it more firmly in a 'jewelry' category instead of 'wearable, supple accessory stuff'.

Don't ask me where that line is and why it seemed important to me at the time; I doubt that's a permanent state of affairs.

Anyway, today I realized I had the right beads for the job, and I finished it. I blurred Mom and her interior fleece-y robe here, because I know she'll be unhappy with me otherwise. I already had to push to have her let me take the picture.

I have more of that yarn in that great blue - that I already knitted a fun pointy not-quite-beret with - some in grey, and some in a pale green I like very much. It's pure acrylic, but it has the feel of a felted wool of some kind; I think the thread itself, so thick and round that you can weave it in other ways (I plan to, as well), is actually a knitted icord of very fine thread, felted chemically, or something like that. Anyway, it has a very interesting texture, I feel there is more to explore with it (and someday I will find and post the label / brand / numbers etc, perhaps).

Edited on June 16: I put a somewhat better, later picture of the necklace up on Flickr here. I think it does a better job of showing the detail, despite being perhaps too heavy on the contrast. It's the same picture inserted in the next entry of the blog, too.