I have just completed my “Tunic Ferocity” (a Ferocity is a one-of-a-kind piece that Sarah and I design, either separately or together) – aka the “Spokane Ferocity” because I bought most of the yarn in a shop called Holy Threads in Spokane. A very cool shop, by the way!

One of my favorite designing techniques is to search my stash, a shop or a yarn market (like those at Madrona or Stitches West) for yarns that go together and then design a Ferocity with them. Sometimes I have a shape in mind – perhaps a capelet or a poncho. Sometimes I just gather up the yarn in sort of a mystical frenzy knowing I can figure the rest out later. That was the genesis of the “Spokane Ferocity.”

This Ferocity (like pretty much all the Ferocities I have made or am likely to make), incorporated several different yarns and stitch patterns – usually 2 or more going at once. I began knitting the back (actually, it is meant to be reversible, so “the back” is merely an arbitrary notation) on one set of needles and the front on another and switched back and forth between the two as the mood struck.

The so-called back has 2 shades (purple and blue) of Trendsetter Pandora Shadow which is a texturally variegated yarn and I thought it might be fun and (ha ha) simple to switch from stockinette to reverse stockinette to garter as the yarn “changes” from the smooth-puffy to the eyelash to the ribbon.

Just follow the visual clues, right? Knit as long as the ribbon part lasts, then as the smooth-puffy hits the needles, switch to purl (if I am on the wrong side – if I am on the right side, I just keep knitting, of course). Not too difficult until you throw in the third texture (from smooth-puffy to eyelash, go from knitting to purling on the right side, purling to knitting on the wrong side, but from ribbon to eyelash switch from knitting to purling only on the right side and do not switch at all on the wrong side…).

Add the second color of the same yarn – left side in blue and right side in purple with the purple advancing onto the blue side and the blue side itself gradually “moving” toward the left since the vest began as a blue point on the bottom right edge. Note that each separate ball of yarn has its own random changes of texture.

Sooooo, on each row there are the increases, the decreases, the color change-over, the textural changes which call for switching from knitting to purling or purling to knitting or not switching at all – and everything depends upon whether I am on the right or wrong side of the darned thing.

And, for quite a while, it looked like I was knitting one of the less well-known Muppets. The so-called front was, maybe? simpler. It had an 8-row repeat lace pattern (linen/silk) on the right and a 24-row cable (tweedy aran) on the left.

Actually, I can handle the complexities of this kind of project just fine – as long as my brain is energized, my eyes are fresh, and nothing in Western Washington makes any sudden movements. As ideal conditions did not present themselves (our house is kind of like a gypsy camp with the addition of cell phones – at least, I don’t think traditional gypsy camps had cell phones – and I realize that my daughter Sasha who spent last semester in Prague will say I should say “Roma People” instead of “gypsy,” but I am not sure the Roma People would like their name associated with the motley suburban/bohemian chaos that centers itself in my living room – oh, and my additional apologies to the Bohemians for the same reason) – where was I?

Oh, yes, concentration in less than ideal conditions….well, I would probably get twitchy if the house was quiet all the time and I had uninterrupted knitting time. On the rare occasions when I do get a silent hour to myself, I keep hopping up to check the laundry or write something on the calendar for the first 45 minutes. Then, once I start to settle into the groove, someone comes home or the phone rings and life is back to normal. I think I have the attention span of a gnat.