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For nearly two years now, I have had ten balls of Debbie Bliss Cathay in a lovely shade of dark raspberry sitting in my stash, waiting to be knit. When I bought them, I also bought a book for Cathay and had every intention of making a three-quarter length sleeved cardigan. Somewhere between purchase and knitting, I decided that I didn’t actually like that sweater, and that I wanted to make Tahoe. I made the back, both fronts and started on a sleeve before I had to admit to myself that not only was it too big, it was sloppy. Into the frog pond it went.
I tried making the Summertime Tunic from Interweave Knits. Something didn’t seem right after six inches or so, and I pulled it off the needles to try on. Dude. That bad boy was a car cozy. Seriously, it could have fit around the front grill of a mini.
Thinking that surely, the third time would be the charm, I started Sizzle. Much better, but still too freaking big, despite having done a gauge swatch. (That? Is not fair. If I go to the trouble of doing a swatch, it should totally fit. There are rules.)
Last night, I started Sizzle for a second time. I stuck with the same needles, which are already a size smaller than what’s recommended, but I went down a pattern size because using smaller needles makes the fabric too stiff. I’m working in the round because whenever I try to knit two pieces that are even roughly the same size, all sorts of madness happens, and they wind up looking like creatures from entirely different planets. My theory is that if its all one piece, it eliminates one catastrophe from the list of possibilities.
Of course, I’m still terrified that it won’t fit. Clothing really just gives me angst. I don’t know why I don’t just stick to socks.
Last night, I finished what had become my traveling sock, and I was a little distressed this morning when I realized that I had two hours to kill at work and nothing to knit. I didn’t want to fuss with my Vog Ons because I’ve been having enough trouble keeping them straight. I have a feather & fan scarf that I’ve taken a tiny break from while I try to figure out if I like it, but I realized that I’ve already let the pattern repeats fall out of my head and I couldn’t find where I had written them down.
Out of options, I grabbed the supplies to start the second sock, figuring that I could at least cast on and do the cuff
I got here and realized that there several flaws in my plan
First, I had 16 live stitches to contend with before I could have my needles back. I’m worried that I won’t have enough yarn to finish and will have to frog back and do the heels and toes in plain black (I am horrified by this possibility.), so I can’t kitchener the toes yet. I strongly considered using paper chopstick sleeves as waste yarn, but at the last minute decided that a tiny crochet hook and the giant safety pin holding my stitchmarkers would make better temporary stitch holders
Disaster adverted, I cast on for the second sock. I knitted the first round, and then decided, for some reason, to look at my notes. And discovered that the pattern I had written down for the cuff was not the same as the cuff had knit. My notes advise me to knit an inch of 2×2 rib, but the actual sock has a cable that starts almost right away. In a pinch, I’m sure that I could knit a tiny cable without an extra needle, but not without knowing where the cable starts or what its mechanics are, and since the cabley bits are from a pattern in a book, I didn’t write that part down.
And so I’m back to nothing to knit and that makes me very antsy.
My husband and I have been watching old episodes of Lost, and we’re almost caught up. I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I saw that the show doesn’t make any damn sense, and just when you think it does? You find out that you were wrong.
As a general rule, I see TV Time as Knitting Time and pretty much can’t sit through anything longer than a standard set of commercials without picking up my needles. This is usually fine. Lately, though, I have been learning that this is hazardous. Shows like Lost have a whole lot of “What the crap???” moments. And those few moments when you are distracted by trying to figure out what the hell is going on (or, let’s be honest, by Sawyer taking advantage of an opportunity to exercise his hotness) are a really, really great time to, say, forget all about that last little yarn-over in your pattern repeat.
Last night, I lost track of how many times I came up one stitch too short on my lace rows on account of being too invested in the show. So far, I’ve been able to fix things by creatively adding in the missing stitch, which I feel certain will spell disaster later on, but I can’t bring myself to rip the socks out a third time. (Yes. It took three tries to start. Often it does.) In the meantime, perhaps I should keep my hands busy with something like stockinette until Lost is over.
WIP: Vog On, originally uploaded by autumnbriars.
I am unreasonably disappointed that I have to work today, while the rest of D.C. gets a three day weekend. What I really want to do is stay home, sit in the sun on my balcony, play on my laptop and knit on these socks. I have a sneaking suspicion that I could knock them out in a day if I didn’t have any other obligations.
The yarn (Tofutsies 722) has been sitting in my stash for over a year, waiting to learn its purpose in life, and A Plan came together early Saturday morning. Its looking like I’ll have enough yarn to make two pairs, which makes me happy, because this pair is intended for a swap partner who loves both socks and handcrafts as much as I do…but I really want a pair for myself. I should have played with this yarn long ago…I love how glossy it is for lace, and that its machine wash/dryable.
My friend Christine said to me the other day something like, “I just wanted someplace that I could geek out about yarn where people won’t think I’m crazy.
Since then. I’ve realized that there are a lot of knitting related thoughts bouncing around in my head that don’t get blogged because I feel silly talking about them on my LiveJournal. Because really, its true. If you don’t knit, you don’t get knitting, and if you don’t get knitting, you can’t get knitters.
A normal person? Would think I was a few crayons short of a box if I admitted to them that I actually lost sleep last night thinking about knitting. Or if I told them that the first thought that popped into my head when I woke up Saturday morning was that I had the perfect yarn in my stash to knit socks for a swap partner, and, what’s more, I could save myself hours of knitting thereby making the project see, feasible by knitting anklets. Non-knitters don’t get that
Hopefully, this blog can be a home for some of the fibery thoughts bouncing around in my head, safe and tucked away from the non-yarnies on my LJ. Because really, who else wants to see five pictures of my socks-in-progress besides another knitter.
