obsession

I have been in an obsessive knitting mood these past few weeks. After the obligations of Christmas knitting, I felt so free. I enjoyed the projects that I made (and need to do a post about them sometime), but they were still projects with an immovable deadline, and that took just a bit of the fun out of them.

Anyway, so I've been wallowing in pattern crushes since then. I've wanted to make Laminaria for months--buried myself in it and finished last week. Fell madly in love with Bitterroot, but since I didn't have just the right yarn on hand, I started knitting a Clothilde instead, with some beautiful Elliebelly yarn that I've been hoarding. (Beautiful, simple, but not boring pattern, incidentally.) Lots of photos to come, of me and my shawl fixation.

But first I must tell you about my newest crush. It's a sweater by Elizabeth Zimmerman. I am not an EZ groupie, since I only heard of her a couple of years ago. (Heresy? Perhaps.) But man, I do love this sweater.

I've always thought of sleeve decreases as something to hide. It would never have occurred to me to make them a design feature. These sleeves have utterly charmed me. I've been sifting through sweater patterns for months, waiting to fall in love. And now I finally have. Or maybe it's Jared Flood's beautiful photography in the article. I would have glanced at the pattern publisher's photos and moved on, never noticing the presence of those wonderful details.