Take Two
The green mitt from the other day was destined for a rip. It was just a wee bit too baggy, and I wanted the lace a the cuff to be a bit deeper. I went down a needle size, which snugged the mitt up just enough. I also added one more lace row to the cuff, which worked much better with the cowl. I'm pleased to report that I didn't repeat the blocking mistakes I made on the cowl. I knew that the secret to maintaining the all important curled edge was to put the pins a few rows in, [...]
The Limits of my Love
I love y'all, really I do. I confess my frequent knitting failures to you, I reveal the alarmingly bowl-like shape of my head to you, and I spend inordinate amounts of time taking pictures on my porch (baffling my neighbors in the process) so that you can know what I'm knitting. But today, I found my limit. Right now the thermometer on the side of my house says 24 F (that's -4 C for the rest of the world). That's not actually all that cold. It's not balmy, but it's manageable. But it is also windy. That, too, I might [...]
That’s Better
I have embraced the idea that blocking is not stretching. It is smoothing. Adjusting. Nudging into place. It does not need to be a hugely violent process. Once I got that notion through my head, the reblocking of the cowl went much better. See? Wee curly lettuce edges, just as I wanted. Order is restored to the universe.
Nemesis
So I'm just really bad at blocking. The grafting was fine...fiddly, slow, demanding of a certain amount of focus...but more or less fine. (Full confession, there's one stitch where I was weaving in my ends and was off by 1/2 a stitch, but it's really hard to find and will never show when it's worn.) The blocking, however, was my undoing. The whole point of this exercise was to preserve the frilly, curly, curvy, round edge that appeared as I knit this. In blocking, I somehow turned all those lovely curves into jagged points. Now it's still cute, but it's [...]
Morning Routine
Collect camera and knitting and go downstairs. Make a note of the temperature. Wish fervently that there were two digits in the number instead of one. Put the water on for tea (this stuff, I'm addicted). Put on a pot of oatmeal. Put on a sweater and hat and shoes. Go out on the back porch. Think filthy things about the wind and its effect on exposed skin. Recall that the pot of oatmeal puts a built in time limit on this little bout of picture taking and get butt in gear. Whack knitting down on the porch railing. Waggle [...]
Alarmingly Frilly
This is not a hat, nor is it a sock. It's not even a mitt. It is, I'm happy to say, a cowl. It is also soft, warm, full of lacy goodness, and a delightful shade of green. On a less positive note, it also seems to be bedecked with a rather troubling number of cat hairs (from my cat of course, it didn't come that way from the dyer or anything). I debated spending yet more time trying to either pick them off or edit them out, but eventually came to the conclusion that this time could better be [...]
Patterns and Yarn and Pictures Oh My
Alrighty, after much delay (we're pretending it's so I could take the socks far away for a photo shoot, not because I was lazy) the pattern for Peregrinate is out. I had great fun with these. They came with me on my trip to DC for Savor and on my trips to Rochester and Pontiac to see Jukebox the Ghost and on a few other smaller trips too. The vast majority of them were knit on the road, which seems fitting given the name. I finished them shortly before my excursion to Port Ludlow, so I thought it was only [...]
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