summer knitting | hAMImono

Whoa! Long slack-off. School began, in hospital for a couple of weeks. Yada, yada. No excuses.

Anyway, with summer looming, I’m on a cotton kick. Not that I’ve completed all my previous wooly projects but I’m just jonesin’ to crank on the cotton. Scored the requisite second skein of Katia Jamaica (#4000) from my fav LYS Puppy Yarn in funky recycle shop and student theatre district Shimokitazawa. Here’s what it looks the front looks like (already finished the back):

Cool and island-y

Couldn’t help myself. Also cast on the same vest pattern but in my colors and according to Symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891) ‘s Vowel poem. You know, the one where he associates vowels with colors (basically launching the Symbolist poetry movement and the psychedelic study of synesthesia)?

Goes like this:

A Black, (E white), I red, U green, O blue : vowels,
I shall tell, one day, of your mysterious origins:
A, black velvety jacket of brilliant flies
Which buzz around cruel smells,Gulfs of shadow; (E), whiteness of vapours and of tents,
Lances of proud glaciers, (white) kings, shivers of cow-parsley;
I, purples, spat blood, smile of beautiful lips
In anger or in the raptures of penitence;U, waves, divine shudderings of viridian seas,
The peace of pastures dotted with animals, the peace of the furrows
Which alchemy prints on broad studious foreheads;O, sublime Trumpet full of strange piercing sounds,
Silences crossed by Worlds and by Angels:
O the Omega, the violet ray of Her Eyes!

– As translated by Oliver Bernard: Arthur Rimbaud, Collected Poems (1962)

Scary and trippy right? I’m off on a tear now to incorporate those colors into the linen and cotten summer top I’m knitting up for myself. Looks like this:

Rimbaud Vowel Vest

Finally, I got very inspired by the origami mind of Elizabeth Zimmermann to knit the extremely simple but fun Moebius Vest with built-in i-cord (yarn forward then slip (purl-wise) last three stitches of each row). So far, I’ve done this: