Does knitting ever get old?
How many shawls, hats, socks, fair isle sweaters (ever) does one really need? Or is knitting about passing the time and keeping idle hands busy, or dressing the grand kids and keeping the local clinic stocked in chemo hats?
My knitting is about all these things. Yes, I need the “idiot knitting” projects that I can work on in front of a gripping mini-series without looking at charts or my hands, and projects that can progress at a very talkative knitting group. But I also need knitting that sustains my mind.
I’d been feeling a real void in the “intellectual knitting” category, so I’ve decided to take on brioche and swing knitting this year. Here are photos of the first attempts.
A swing knitting scarf, following Heidrun Liegmann’s tutorials:
I mushed together tutorials one and two, because I didn’t want gauntlets and a funky hat, into a big swatch, and then moved on to Tutorial #3, which generated this nifty scarf. It seems to be color work in the same vein as the Strandwanderer Shawl by Lea Viktoria. 
Both techniques play with different ways to organize color fields on a knit surface.
I’ve been ogling Nancy Marchant’s books on brioche knitting, but hadn’t taken one on until a friend at the local knitting guild meeting let drop that a Ravelry KAL based on the Willow pattern in her latest book would be starting up in February. Suddenly I was all a-rush to get some practice in 2-color brioche under my belt. Here’s a hat I knit in Intrepid Tulips Sock (Reykjavik and Smoke). The beauty of it is that it’s reversible!
So now I’m off and running on the Willow Scarf. Most knitters are working in either two lace weight yarns or in two fingering weight yarns. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to combine a lace weight (Intrepid Tulips Lace, in Cordoba) with a fingering weight (Intrepid Tulips Cashmere Silk, in Sapphire). I like the way the lace floats on the blue field.
So, at least for now, mastering new techniques and playing with new ways to combine colors and yarns is keeping knitting interesting.