It's Come Roaring Back, With Needles Blazing

It’s no secret that I haven’t been much of a knitter lately. In fact, I can hear you now, saying to yourself, incredulously, “She knits?!” – or, depending on how you know me, “She still knits?!”

Yes and no. I do, in general. But no, I haven’t been lately.

I seem to have made the mistake of casting on for two pair of knee-high socks at the same time. Only to find that whatever impulse to create I felt in any part of my being quickly drowned in a sea of fiddly, small stitches churned out in round after endless round of knitting with sticks as slight as toothpicks. And, bound by my guilt of setting aside a perfectly good work in progress to sate my fiber lust with another, I have responded by simply not knitting at all.

I go into this, I guess, to make two things clear: 1) I had no idea that Twist Collective even existed until this morning (I seem to have missed all the hype and buzz that accompanied the making of the premiere issue), and 2) Twist Collective is a fiber-loving force to be reckoned with. (Seriously. Check it out.)

I stumbled upon it today (their very first day, even!), by chance, through the wonder that is Ravelry. And oh my! am I in awe. Gorgeous designs and gorgeous photography. And gorgeously written articles to boot.

The combined sum of which have completely sent me to some sort of handcrafted, fleecy nirvana, where the streets are paved with the qiviut lovingly hand-collected from the molting muskox in the spring. I have now spent my entire morning clicking at yarn sites, conducting my own, thoroughly unscientific comparisons of fiber content, drape, and wraps per inch, and generally tending and feeding my now-reclusive inner-knitter. I am even hatching plots to get clacking on a sweater. Or two. And maybe even – dare I say? – a pair of socks.

Welcome back from exile, knitting urge!

(I have missed you.)