Hardest thing I've ever knitted! Emily's fancy peplum

Knitting is a solace and a comfort to those of us who find it difficult to be a participant in this world. Sometimes I just want to withdraw, to put my feet up. To have a cat. To knit is to "make", while the world unmakes itself right before my eyes. It knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care, and all that. I no longer have babies to knit for, so I BUY babies now: though I did not have the slightest interest in dolls as a child and even scorned them, I now find myself drawn to them as a comfort, collecting them (all right, I have three - or two and a half, as one of them has been ordered but isn't here yet), even wanting to knit things for them. I am old now, do not give two figs what anyone thinks, and if I like doing something and it gives me joy, then I'll do it, flaky or not. This was one of my harder and hokier creations, with a bobbly stitch that would look much better in a larger size. In this case, the bobbles are the size of golf balls in relation to the size of the sweater, which is supposed to fit a newborn baby. But who can tell what sorts of interests will creep in where other things, much more painful or stressful things, have vacated or been taken away? 

At least they don't melt

Every summer, we have a tradish - or I do - of knitting something for the girls while they're away on their camping trip, usually animals of some kind. Not sure when this started, but apparently it led to squeals of delight: "Look what Nanny made!'.

This is the first time I have knitted food for them (though I did an assortment of vegetables in a basket for their Mum): ice cream cones, and they're harder than they look. There are two components (I won't tell you what they are, eejit), the bottom half usually being harder. Displaying them without them falling over is a challenge. I used those plastic molds that you use to make juice popsicles. They had to be good for something.

The element of surprise in these projects is crucial, though I never get to see it. This all started small and escalated, a little alarmingly. A couple of years ago I made a tableau called Snail Valley (still reverberating in memory) that I am particularly proud of:

This is only a tiny percentage of it, as I photographed the snails before I knitted the leaves, branches, mushrooms, rocks, trees, etc. that completed the scene. I don't know how many snails I completed, probably at least ten, all different from each other.  I must say they're cool. The pattern had the snail's eyes in a jolly, winky position on their head. SNAILS DO NOT HAVE THEIR EYES ON THEIR HEADS. They loll out on gooey, freaky stalks, the ends of their slimy retractable antennae.

This is the Megasnail, about ten inches long, commissioned for an 8th birthday. 

The body was harder to make than the shell.

Oh well.

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