Yellow Wheat Sonja Van Gogh Head Band

Awhile back I started reading about different kinds of novelty yarns that involved rough drum carding of different colors so that the colors and textures remained distinct in the finished roving. At that time I had some extra unspun wool that I'd dyed for a couple of different projects. In looking at the colors -- gold ochre and chestnut brown -- I realized they reminded me of one of my favorite Van Gogh paintings .... "Wheat Field with Crows."

The left-over wool became three short skeins of yarn. One skein became a neck cuff. One may be enough for mittens -- though that may be a prodigal thought. The third wasn't really large enough for anything other than something small, fast, and useful.

background on the pattern

Currently fashion demands we keep our ears warm with unisex ear muffs or slip-on fleece head bands. These accessories cost around $20 to $30 dollars, depend on the sweat of workers in 3rd world countries, send our money elsewhere and are... well ... ugly. I don't like slavery. I don't like shipping jobs overseas. I don't like sending money elsewhere to buy trash. And finally, I don't like being forced to pay for ugly.

The best way to strike back? Design something that is quick and simple to make that employs the basic skills of knitting and purling. Add in a couple of intermediate, but actually quite easy, techniques to expand the skills. And, last but definately not least, make it attractive on a visual and fashion level.

color and retro

1940s movies are full of women who were stars of the silver-screen for swimming or dancing or skating better than anyone else. Sonja Henie often wore a simple headband that kept her ears warm, her bangs out of her eyes and her medium-long hair bouncing behind her as she leapt, twirled, spun and danced across the ice. These headbands tied under the chin and often appeared to be made of embroidered felt or kid leather with rabbit fur lining or intarsia knitted wool.

And, of course, the whole ear connection thing with ears of wheat and Van Gogh ears was irresistable.Yellow Wheat Sonja Van Gogh Head Band is the result and you can find the pattern over on prodigalsock.com by clicking on the name or by clicking the Prodigal Sock picture, upper left.

The only thing I have left to do, to make it complete, is bake some sculpey crow baubles to sew on here and there. I think I'll resist adding some red gauze to the right side.

I'll be putting together a collection of ear-warmer designs for sale in a couple of weeks. Let me know if you'd be interested. In the meantime, make yourself a unique earwarmer to celebrate women who do things better than anyone else, individual vision and, well, ears.

Never Quite Enough for Two

This blog isn't about conservation. It isn't about buying enough yarn in the same dye-lot in order to finish a project. It isn't about forcing a certain number of stitches-per-inch from a specific type of yarn on a specific size of needle. This blog is about profligate, spend-thrift, wild and unconstrained creation and the babbling that goes along with it. This blog is about starting at the end and working to the beginning.

Not quite enough for two but way too much for ten. Isn't that the absolute foundation, the universal precursor, to all prodigals. For me, a prodigal sock is not only that second-of-a-pair that never becomes real. For me, a prodigal is a creation that stumbles before completion.

Sometimes I over-estimate the size of a skein. Halfway through the second sock I'm out of yarn, and I end up with one sock and a squiggly ball of not-quite-a-sock yarn.

Sometimes a Prodigal is caused by an over-enthusiastic idea about a new kind of heel or toe or bright hopes for a lace pattern. Once started, the learning or working process becomes so taxing that after the first sock is finished a second is unthinkable.

Sometimes a Prodigal Sock is caused by a sudden and vicious attack of ennui. The yarn was beautiful and the pattern was interesting but the merging of stitches and fiber muddies and tangles and leaves a truly ugly single sock in my lap. I not only begin to doubt the yarn, I begin to doubt my ability to create.

Prodigals don't have to be socks and they don't all belong to me.

In the United States alone, there are millions of sweaters hidden in drawers and under hampers, perfect except they are minus one arm. There are hundreds of thousands of nearly finished afghans stuffed in the back corners of closets. The knitting needles or afghan or crochet hooks are still in place. The completed portion of the throws are neatly wrapped around the remaining unworked skeins of yarn.

I don't need to do any surveys to say this is true. I don't need any fact-finding safaris through knitting-circles and needlework shops. I don't need hard factual data supplied by accountants with abaci and brief cases. I know those are good numbers on unfinished sweaters and afghans. All I have to do is look in my closet and under the hamper, count the number of fiber related blogs on the web and do the math.

Prodigals happen to everyone. Prodigals happen when we somehow overstep and have no idea of how to gracefully recover from our fall into reality.

My trip-up has always been the short skein. What looks like enough yarn for a few socks, ends up being enough for 1-1/2. What looks like enough yarn for three caps, is actually enough for 3/4 of one. No amount of weighing, measuring or wraps-per-inch checking helps.

I've found a way around the short skein pitfall by changing the direction I travel in the creation process. I no longer look for the perfect finished yarn to re-create a perfect finished pattern. Now I decide I want to find a new way to make something to do something. Then I think about it. Then I draw it. Then I spin for it. Then I start and stop and rip, and start and stop, and start again.

Sometimes, when I'm done I have a pattern that starts at the end and moves towards the beginning, at least one sample item, and occasionally, a couple of skeins of one-of-a-kind yarn for sale.  Othertimes, I throw it all in the garbage.  Occasionally, I don't even take the needles out first.  Just straight in the trash.


ProdigalSock is here so that I can share the process with you.  There will be a lot of stumbling, there will be a lot of creating and there will be a lot of babbling about it.