KNITTING UP DULWICH ROAD

While two fingers of my right hand are loosely taped together and knitting is strictly verboten – for up to 8 weeks, apparently – there’s nothing I can do on the blanket except plan and then write about the planning with my not-quite-the-best typing. Backspace bar getting a lot of love. (Tried WordPress dictation mode. Gobbledegook and weird spaces. Clearly I mumble. I also don’t seem to be able to think properly without engaging my hands. Lots of staring into space.)

This is the most frustrating injury. Not ok for knitting, but perfectly well enough to manage most other things, if imperfectly. Why couldn’t it be no washing up? Although I guess I don’t engage in that for up to 5 hours a day 7 days a week.

Hey ho. Time to reflect. And taking a step back has allowed me to admit that I hate the park entrance square. Oh, very pleased with my cleverness at achieving what I set out to do and wholly reluctant to rethink the square because of all the work involved (as I said before) – but it stinks! Over busy and frankly just plain ugly.

So, what to do instead, given that the idea will be appled to the four corner squares?

I think I understand now why Debbie Abrahams makes so much use of textured stripes. Here are a few that I knitted for her 2025 mystery blanket, The Seashore. The labels spell out what each is aiming to conjure, and I think they are genuinely evocative.

Mama In A Stitch blogger Jessica also features textured stripes in her knitting and crochet designs that are ‘inspired by nature’.

I could invest in some targeted guidance, such as Norah Gaughan’s Knitting Nature, but I’d prefer to work something out myself, even if I don’t get it right first time. There are tons of textured stripes in the stitch dictionaries I already have, so I’ll start there. And then of course there is the wellspring of Ravelry.

I will stay with the the shades used for the current park entrance square as they reflect the springtime colours effectively, but I’ll probably cut down the number and if I use the dark green of the current foreground leaf pattern, it will be sparingly.

So, nothing for it now but to nose through my books, home in on a textured stripe pattern or devise my own from a combination of stitches, and then twiddle my entirely unaffected thumbs until I can get the needles going again.

And there are other squares to plan, of course.

Featured image: Textured green-stripe knitting, A R zimbarus, Unsplash