a very small knitting rant

Really this is about the design of knitting patterns.

Am I a matron? Am I an old lady with no shape I'd like to show? Am I rotting in a grave, but dog gone it I am covered in hand-knitted lace?

Does no one else pay attention to color?! Fashion?! And, I don't know, DESIGN?!

And, conversely, do I have $80 to drop on a project every time something decent shows up? No, I do not. So kind knitters of the world, kind designers who understand there is a big middle ground between knitted mumus and knitted thongs (in cotton or edible licorice strings, for real), please choose affordable yarns. As in affordable for me, not you. They don't pay me to knit yet.

Because really, the tragedy here is that not only do I love to knit, I also need to. It's maybe the only thing left that regularly calms me down. I end up knitting in bed, folks, when I can't sleep and I've tried pills plus booze plus reading fashion mags backwards. Also I need to because I am always cold, and need very specific kinds of sweaters, shawls, and many pairs of fingerless mittens to SURVIVE.

Case in point: on Friday, I wore jeans, knee-high wool socks, knee-high boots, a t-shirt under a wool turtleneck under a blazer, and sometimes I wore my huge scarf and mitts just for kicks. Indoors.

That's how it is, folks.

Designers of knitted wear, I think, get too busy. They get too into technique and forget about fit and style. This is why Wendy of knitandtonic and Stefanie of Glampyre are my heroes. Oh my god, they're women with bodies that wear clothes which are FLATTERING. Oh my god, and they knit too, and sometimes even in lace and with cables.

Honestly, really, does anyone want to wear an entire sweater knit in fair isle? Or horizontal stripes? Or big, boxy, nastily-draping-in-terrible-places sweaters?

Books I should really just buy:
Lace Style
Fitted Knits
Wendy's, whenever it's out

But I am ornery and poor.

Back to the using of Xmas money, folks, for dye kits and bare yarn and books on dye. Back to the kind of knitting stuff that could actually earn me money. We shall see, we shall see.