Uncharted Waters

For the first time in my knitting career, I felt an (almost) overwhelming desire to knit socks. I’ve never really gotten socks. My mother trained me up to look with deep suspicion on anything that can’t be machine washed and dried. I’ve done a good job of getting over that for sweaters, especially since they don’t need to be washed all that often, but socks? They need to be washed every time you use them. And they wear out. I’m ridicuously sentimental about just about everything I own including clothes. Two of my favorite shirts recently had a run with some bleach that they came out the worse for, but I can’t bear to throw them away yet. And I didn’t knit them with my own two little hands. All I did was buy them.
But a little while ago I saw these. And for some reason, which may not be at all rational, I was filled with the desire to knit socks.
So I'm making a start with this.

We'll see how this goes.

Separation Anxiety

I finished the Clover Fields scarf quite some time ago. I was making it for someone to give to his wife, and I was surprised by the pangs of anxiety I felt as the time came to give it to him so he could give it to her.

It’s funny because I don’t particularly want it for myself. I think it’s nice, but I wouldn’t have decided to make it for myself. Even so, I was very anxious to see my little scarf going out into the world with strangers.


I guess it’s just that I spent so much time with the thing. I carried it around and knit it out of teeny yarn on tiny needles, and I even cobbled the pattern together myself from one of the shawl patterns in Victorian Lace Today.


I hope she loves it and takes good care of it.

Taking the Edge Off

I have lot of homework. All the time. It is almost exclusively reading. And reading things like Kant's Critique of Pure Reason.
So imagine my joy and surprise when I realized not too long ago that I can read these thick, soul-crushingly convoluted things, and knit the Second Green Sweater at the same time. And I'm even reading more carefully than I would have otherwise, because I'm not impatient to be done and get back to my knitting.
It's a wonderful world.

Stubborn

I had an... interesting night last night. It was something like a battle of wills between me and the Lily-of-the Valley Smoke ring.
I thought it was time to be finished. I'm dead sick of skinny yarn and little needles. I've been itching to get at my size 9's and some Ultra Alpaca. The smoke ring almost thwarted me. But I kicked its butt.
I got to the end of the last lace pattern repeat and realized I had enough yarn for maybe six more rounds. I had twelve to go. I really have noone but myself to blame for this. I tend to knit with a very loose tension anyway, and with all the bobbles in the lace pattern I was knitting even looser (I don't think that's really a word) than usual. And the pattern does warn that if your tension is remarkably different from the gauge given, you might need more yarn. Unfortunately it didn't occur to me to check my gauge. It's lace, I never check gauge with lace.
I pretended that maybe (just maybe) I would be able to eke out the last twelve rounds if I knit tighter than I had been (even though it requires adding half again the number of stitches). So I knit four rounds into the edging before I gave up.
I am too much of a wuss to just pull out the needles and frog away, so I spent about four hours tinking back through the four rounds of edging and the last pattern repeat. I could have smacked myself for not putting a lifeline in before the last pattern repeat the way I had been planning to, because even that far back, I saw this coming. I did however find that I could tink back four rounds at a time. All you do is pick up the stitch a few rows back instead of just on the previous row. Though this does mean that you are working with up to four strands of yarn that are getting progressively longer, but that you can't wind into a ball because they are still attached to the knitting. I came dangerously close to just having a huge pile of yarn vomit, but it worked out in the end.
I had lost hope that I would finish last night. I had been planning to go to sleep at a reasonable hour because I have been so sleep deprived, and it was near 11:00. But I thought, "Why don't I just get started on the edging? I can finish tomorrow if I have to." So I popped in another movie (my fourth of the day) and got to it.
I was done casting off around 1:30AM. I was so pissed with the freakin' thing that I couldn't stand the thought of not being able to start the Second Green Sweater right away that I just kept going.
The really depressing thing is, I don't particularly like the finished object. I like the yarn, the lace pattern, it looks pretty on the dummy head on the pattern, but I'm just not feeling the love for this thing right now. Maybe it will look better if I re-do the bind off so it isn't quite so loose and I block it.
But I was so grouchy about the freakin' thing that I cast on a gauge swatch for my sweater. And stayed up 'till 2:30.

Must. Be. Strong.

I am going to knit the Sienna Cardigan designed by Ann E. Smith. But I am not allowed until I finish my other projects. My Clover Field scarf just needs to be grafted together and blocked. But it's still done even if it isn't blocked right? I have just under two pattern repeats and the edging of the Lily of the Valley Smoke Ring left to knit. I need to finish. I have five hanks of Ultra Alpaca sitting next to my desk. I want to use my spiffy new swift and ballwinder and start right now!
But I can't. Or I'll never finish my other two projects and they will hand over my head until they are done.
Must. Be. Strong.