Flummoxed

flummoxed

/ˈfləməkst/

adjective

bewildered or perplexed. 

"he became flummoxed and speechless"

It has been warm here on Vancouver Island over the past week. Yesterday, we decided to head into one of the forest parks to take Mr. Seymour for a walk where he wouldn't overheat. I seldom take photos of these walks anymore, because after you live on the Island for a while, one place starts to look a lot like another and then you realize you've got a phone full of photos of random trees and ferns. This time, however, I spied something pretty cute:

Look closely, and you'll see a stone that someone has painted as a frog and left in the crook of the tree. I love stuff like that. It's nice to see people finding ways to put smiles on other people's faces:

I've been finding it hard to stay focused on my projects recently. Part of it is just your typical cyclical loss of mojo (that's the scientific term). The other part of it is that I have been flummoxed.

I like to think of myself as somewhere in-between a planner and an improviser... I love to daydream about projects I'd like to try, and I enjoy the problem-solving that comes with trying to use up skeins of yarn in my stash that have been difficult to match with a pattern. I feel great satisfaction when I come up with a plan that will mean that I can finally use a long-hoarded skein of yarn, and I feel even better when the plan works out better than I imagined.

So, I had big plans to take this yarn and try them out on my weaving loom:

I have two balls of this yarn. I bought one ball during a trip to Winnipeg a couple of years ago and then I ordered a second ball from the same shop about a year later. I didn't have any plans for them at the time, but I figured that I was more likely to get a project I liked from two balls rather than from just one.

Over time, I've gone over the project pages for this colourway on Ravelry to see what it looks like worked up. I knew that the colours ranged from the watermelon pink to a dusty blue to a greyish blue and then to an autumn orange. And that's about as far as I got with it.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago when I determined that it would be interesting to see if I could weave with it. I looked at a lot of ideas online, borrowed books from the library, did lots of research about different types of weaving... I even bought extra yarn and extra reeds for my loom that I felt would work better with the yarn weight. I determined that it would be a good idea to re-wind the yarn so that I could make sure to highlight some of the colours in the warp.

So, I sat down with my ball winder and took one of the balls and starting re-winding it...

And then I got stuck in a big tangle...

And then I realized exactly what the colours were like in the reverse. Would you believe those two balls are the same colourway?

That orange really threw me. I knew it was there, but for some reason, seeing the ball in this order really shocked me.

I had bought some extra yarn in the watermelon pink tone to use as the weft, but when I put everything together, I just couldn't make it all work:

So, it's back to the drawing board with those balls of yarn. I think it was probably for the best because while I was winding it I realized that it probably wasn't going to be strong enough to be a decent warp anyway. I probably saved myself a lot of broken threads and a lot of tears.

That's what I'm telling myself anyway.

Meanwhile, I took the watermelon pink yarn and started knitting a top with it using a deceptively simple stitch called ostrich plume. I love it already, so I don't feel so bad about abandoning my original plans. Still, I would really like to make something with those balls of yarn... we'll see...

Meanwhile, I spent a couple of hours this weekend adding a few more elements to my textile illustration project:

I think I'd eventually like to quilt it and then make it into a wall hanging...

... except I don't know how to quilt...

... and I don't know how I'm going to make it into a wall hanging...

I guess we'll see if that works out. 

Time for a cuppa. Have a great weekend.