Monday, May 29, 2006

Proof of Knitting

What little progress has been made, anyway.

I have been knitting while tired, which is not ever a good idea for me. Yes, there is one very glaringly obvious row of the crazy-assed stockinette that results from me purling stitches the wrong way, I thought about ripping back and re-doing that one row, then I realized that I am going to be covering most of it up with sheep, so I left it. It does annoy me though, rest assured.

I have officially reached the point in the school year when I am ready for summer vacation...but I still have a month left of work before that happens. Needless to say, I am cranky as well as tired. They are not a good combination!

My in-laws came for a visit with the boys this holiday weekend, which was nice, but tiring too. We drove up to Saratoga yesterday, and walk around on Broadway window-shopping which was fun. I did pop into Saratoga Needle Arts and I did buy the current copy of Interweave Knits magazine and a ball of Fortissima Sock yarn in a pretty pastel Fair Isle color. After the blanket, I plan on working on socks for a while. Little somethings to balance out the big something.

Saturday, May 20, 2006

I am all talk

I can't let things go...

I can't allow imperfections when I see them...

At least not glaringly huge, wonky ones. I mean, even my husband noticed this screw-up! And he doesn't normally notice much of anything I try to show him in my knitting.

I had to rip back and re-knit the crazy bit on the Sheep Dreams blanket. It was driving me nuts and sapping my will to knit on it further. So, last weekend, I ripped it back and slowly, a few rows at a time, I have knit past where I was. The lower squares are done.

Surprisingly sheepless, no? Actually, you add them on afterwards in duplicate stitch. The blanket is surprisingly simple. And even better, not boring yet.

I had a knitting epiphany this week as well.

I have been tormented for as long as I can remember by my stockinette stitch. No matter how hard I tried, it always looked a little bit funky. A little bit odd. A little bit, not-quite-right. So I decided to go back to the basics and I re-watched an on-line video [these videos are terrific by the way] on both the knit and the purl stitch to see if I was missing something.

Indeed, I was.

I have been wrapping the yarn around the needle clockwise instead of counter-clockwise on my purl stitches. I am positive that I was not taught this way...Hi Amy!...but somewhere along the way, I started doing it backwards. And hence, the funky, twisty stockinette. What a difference it makes to do it correctly! Faster too! I still forget sometimes and do a whole row the wrong way, and yes, it shows, and yes, there are two of them, and, yes, they will be mostly covered by little sheepies, so no, I am NOT going to rip back to them and re-knit them.

At least I don't think so.


Thursday, May 11, 2006

Progress and well, um, UN-Progress

First, the progress!
This is what I have completed on the Sheep Dreams blanket.
Almost done with the lower squares. There is a very wonky section on the lower left hand border area. I toyed with the idea of ripping back and re-knitting it, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. It is so many rows back! It will be a good exercise for me in Letting Things Go. I certainly need to do that. As well as learning that Perfection is Not Necessary. Another good lesson I should pay attention to.

The un-progress:

Yes, it used to be the start of a sock. I tried it on my foot, and it was too big around, so I tried to rip back to the ribbing on the cuff where the too-big stockinette began, but kept screwing up trying to get the loose stitches back on the dpns. Finally, I got so pissed that I just ripped it out altogether and will eventually re-cast on. Eventually. I don't do well with more than one project on the needles at a time anyways. I guess I am just monogamous at heart.

And lastly, just a shot of where the magic happens.

The spontaneous healing knitting bag

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Spontaneous Healing?


I have come to the conclusion, that my new knitting bag has magical qualities.

Remember how I had way too many stitches in the Sheep Dreams blanket, and was going to do a series of YOs to fix the problem rather than frog back to get to the row where I had the 120 stitches I was supposed to?

So, get this...

I get the blanket out of my bag, I decide to recount one more time so I can evenly space out the YOs.

I count. My mind spins. I re-count. I make my husband count.

There are 120 stitches, exactly, on my needles.

The knitting bag somehow spontaneously healed my knitting! It is like a miracle.

My husband, the skeptic, says that I must have counted incorrectly the night before. Excuse me? I counted at least four times and each time had the same, way-too-many-freakin-stitches number.

There is only one conclusion to draw.

The bag heals.

Here it is, all 120 stitches of it.Here is an blurry upclose shot. The pretty stitch markers are a birthday gift from my friend Amy. Aren't they pretty?

It is going well, and is a nice pattern, just enough going on to keep my interest up, but not so much that I can't do other things while I am working on it.

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

WWJD?

So, what would Jaimi do if she suddenly discovered that instead of having 120 stitches on the Sheep Dreams blanket, she actually had 132?

Factor in the fact that she has frogged this thing back to the beginning 2 times already.

Also, consider that she has NO idea why there are 132 stitches when she has followed the pattern exactly and carefully since the second frogging episode.

And, also?, look how pretty!



The answer is, of course, throw in twelve k2togs in the next row of stockinette. Seriously, what would you have done?