Knitting Update
Wednesday, October 18th, 2006Yarn Shop Fun
Here’s a photo of my yarn booth, my friend Irene, and my friend Trish Bloom at her booth, at Threadbear last Saturday. I thank the Boyz at Threadbear for the opportunity, I had a lot of yarns available to sell, and enough sold that I was very happy to have sat there one full day.
Nevermind that the people in the shop that day were great company and it would have been fun, sale or no. Barb Hranilovich was there with a booth, and I had not seen her in a very long time. She is such sunshine! She’s a kindred spirit, in our relationship with color.
My Regular Knitting
I’m cranking away on no-brainer afterthought-heel socks on size 2 needles, finished all of the first (toe up) sock of a pair, except for binding off and the heel. I need to dig out the second skein from the pile so I can keep going on these.
They are an odd colorway, with magenta/ turquoise/ black/ purple/ yellow (Rob commented on them at Guild last night) but I’ve had this yarn in stash a long time and honestly it was in 50gm center-pull balls, so I could just grab and go, no effort at all to get knitting.
The Challenging Project of the Day
The red tie is grueling to knit. At least I’m enjoying the smallness of the project (on size 0 US /2mm Brittany birch wood needles). These tiny, bendable needles are kind to my hands.
I have completed 38 rows and I’m at 58 stitches wide right now. It’s not fun at all. I’m doing it flat, with knit/purl texture in the pattern of argyle. Very few purls, really, but I keep putting them in the wrong place. I think I’m at about a 66% accuracy rate. Thank goodness there are only 4 purls per row.
I actually spent a long time yesterday unravelling one column of stitches at a time and re-chaining them back up with a 2mm crochet hook. I un-did a bunch of purls, changed my mind about how I wanted the patterning to go. It was too confusing and life is too short! Teresa Lee helped me figure out where I’d gone wrong, last night at guild. I figured I could do it again (make that mistake, that is).
Ugh. Counting purl texture stitches. How do people do this? Some people appear to be able to do it in their sleep. I swear, for me intarsia would be easier because the color screams at you where it is. The purls hide because they are the same color, until five rows after you thought they were right, and placed other purls near them in relationship to the incorrect spot. And then you have to undo dozens of stitches to fix it all. Ugh. I think I do have this set up a little better, and now that I can see the previous patterns a bit more, maybe it will smooth out for me a bit.
Optimism
The good news is that the pattern called for a single crochet at the bottom of the tie and I did that right away yesterday. It does look good (I was afraid it would look clunky). There is something about small yarn and small tools that makes things look more refined. I’m happy with that part of the project.
I’m still a little worried that the stockinette will not want to block flat, but water on it made things much better and steam should take it to the next level.
Reality
I probably will not get much knitting done today. There are three long-ignored errands to run before my public appearances begin. I have to teach a private lesson, then I work with the Kidz for one hour, and then I dance for 3 hours. It’s not too easy to knit while dancing!