I, along with a couple of my knitterly friends, have decided to take the knitting geekiness to the next level by joing the Knitting Guild Association and entering their Master’s Program. Clearly, I don’t know everything there is to know about knitting. I figured this would be a great way to challenge my existing skills while also gaining new ones. Is it geekier than the Knit Geek code block? You bet. In fact, it’s one louder.
Purling idiot, that’s me!
I have to frog E’s sweater and start over because a) I don’t think I need to cast on as many extra stitches in the armhole–the armhole is ginormous, and b) not only are my purl stitches are WAY bigger than my knit stitches, but they also slant to one side.
I didn’t realize how bad this was until I started the sleeve.
Unlike the body of the sweater, the sleeve is knit in the round (knitting only, no purling). Pictures do not do justice to the beautiful and orderly way the stitches of the sleeve line up. I cannot illustrate their perfect tension, their glorious evenness, in digital still-life. Neither can I accurately portray the hideous misshapenness of the purls in the body of the sweater or how they moan and lean and, yes, even drool. My purl stitches are idiotic. The progress on the sleeve is beautiful. The rest is ass. No, it’s worse than ass. It’s ball-sack. It’s hairy, stinky ball-sack and I have to frog it.
I checked knittinghelp.com to try and figure out what I’m doing wrong. Guess what–I have been purling through the back loop. This has caused every purl stitch I’ve ever done–every single one since the day I started knitting–to lean, to drool, and to essentially look like ball-sack in every single project I have ever made that required purl stitches.
I want to scream.
But, at least I now know. Also, I believe purling the right way will allow me to go faster.
I think I’ll scream anyway.
Knitting Geek
I am such a knitting geek! So much so that it was hard to resist the Knitting Geek Code from Knitty. What kind of knitting geek? Check out my code block:
—————BEGINNING KNITTER’S GEEK CODE BLOCK————
Version 1.1
KCR+++ Exp+ SPM++ KP++ AddiT> !Syn Nov- Cot Wool+++ Lux> Stash Scale+ Fin Ent? FI? Text !Lace Felt !DPN ML+++>$ GuageW(F) EZ+ FO++ WIP Blog AltSP>
—————-END——————————————————–
5 for Monday (+1)
1. I am knitting away on E’s sweater–I adore the pattern and the yarn, so I’m loving this project.
2. I’ve finished the Christmas socks for E–have cast on the Christmas socks for I-6. Photos will be posted soon.
3. The March dishcloth is not going well. At some point, I didn’t increase or decrease where I should have and was a stitch short. I frogged it and will start it again later.
4. We went to a kid’s birthday party yesterday. A great time was had by all. Last night, I-6 had some questions about the birthday girl. I’ve transcribed the entire converstion verbatum because it was so funny:
“Mommy, is she five now?” he asked.
“Yes, she is five,” I replied.
“What comes after five?”
“Six.”
“What comes after six?”
“Seven,” I say. I’m also starting to feel impatient because he is supposed to be going to sleep.
He continues, “what comes after seven?”
So, ready to end this, I say, “Take a guess.”
“43?”
I guess time is fluid when you’re 5. It’s also funny because the birthday kid really is 5 going on 43.
5. Perusing the blogs, I found this. Kind of fun. Apparantly, 1,397,854 people in US have the first name Jennifer. Only I have my last name.
| HowManyOfMe.com | ||
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6. My Elizabeth Zimmerman books arrived yesterday. I am so going to make a baby surprise jacket!
Mondays are for Blogging
I really need to set aside some time just for blogging. Otherwise, as my dear readers can see, I just keep putting it off and putting it off and before I know it, a week has gone by when I promised I’d blog the next day. There hasn’t been too much going on here, but I did want to wax a little about E’s sweater and knitting with yarn you don’t like.
I had made a fair amount of progress on E’s sweater, when I realized I just didn’t like the yarn. No, “didn’t like” does not do justice to the feelings I was having for this yarn. I hated it. No, I loathed it. It was loathsome. Yes, that’s it. The yarn in which I was knitting E’s sweater was loathsome. It was scratchy. It was shiny. It was acrylic.
Up until this point, I had absolutely no problem knitting with acrylic. Acrylics have come a long way in the past few years. Yarn manufacturers have developed many fine, fun, and even soft yarns. However, my last few projects have mostly been from premium natural fibers–merino wool, cashmerino, Peruvian wool, etc. It sure did not take much to spoil me. Yes, when I first started knitting, I really didn’t see the difference between yarns (excepting of course the cost). But now… Well, why keep toiling at a project if the yarn you are using is an abomination? This is another thing I learned from the Doctor Who scarf. Yes, that was a tiresome project, but at least I liked the yarn. Buy the best yarn you can afford, dear reader. It makes all the difference in the world.
I’ll be casting on E’s sweater in the Artyarns today. I can’t wait.
It’s here!
I am beyond thrilled. Received in the mail today: one size zero 32″ circular needle from Knit Picks and twelve hanks of Artyarns superwash merino in the Navy Sunset colorway from FabulousYarnDOTcom. I can now knit Christmas socks with my sock yarn and I can start over E’s (and eventually start I’s) sweater in a yarn I do not hate. More on this tomorrow. I am going to work on my dishcloth.
Waiting
This morning I am waiting for E to poop. Yes, you read that right. Late yesterday afternoon, E swallowed something. I thought it might have been a toy, but wasn’t sure. So, I packed him (and some knitting) up and headed over to the ER.
They were busy. Our recent snow and ice storm had people out on the sledding slopes, so there were many kids (and adults!) with banged up faces and broken wrists. We waited. E slept. I knitted. We were there about two and a half hours before they came to take us for an x-ray. The x-ray tech was cryptic. When I asked if they saw anything, he said the doctor would discuss it with me. I prepared for the worst.
Then more waiting. I tried knitting, but E was awake by then, so I chased him around the gurney instead. We played peek-a-boo with the curtain that was supposed to provide us with some privacy. I made him an exam-glove balloon. We waited some more.
The doctor came in and I steeled myself. “It’s a screw,” she announced.
Luckily, it had already passed into his small bowel. So now, we wait.
UPDATE–We didn’t have to wait long. He passed the screw while I was blogging. Hooray!
The Scarf Goes to Work
Just a quick update–here is DH heading off to work, proudly strutting the Doctor Who scarf. Cute, huh?
I did it!
The Doctor Who scarf is finally finished. It is easily the largest thing I’ve ever knitted. It’s about 16 feet long and maybe 14 inches wide. There are 8 colors used in total and 48 color changes. All in garter stitch. This project challenged my fortitude, let me tell you.
Even the kids were glad I finished it.
So glad that it was impossible to get the image of it that I’d envisioned.
Maybe tomorrow. DH is going to wear it to work (I’ll get a photo of him on the way out the door), so I’ll have to try when he gets home. :-)
While I was finishing up the last three colors last night, I had a chance to reflect on my experience knitting this scarf. Here’s what I learned:
- Always have more than one knit project on the needles. It’s very easy for enthusiasm to flag when faced with a large undertaking like this.
- Spend a knitting session, or two, just focusing on weaving in the ends. It really would have sucked to have to weave them all in today. It was nice just having a few–it went quickly and I was really able to enjoy having finished this monster!
- I don’t knit as fast as I thought I did. I mean, I reckoned myself a pretty speedy knitter since I was able to knock of small projects so quickly–a baby hat in a day, a pair of socks in a weekend, 2 pairs of Fetching in another weekend. Boy was I wrong. I figured last night that I was averaging about two and a half minutes per row. With 60 stitches in a row, that’s 24 stitches a minute. I guess that’s not too bad. Here’s some more math. There are 890 rows in this scarf so it took me around 37 knitting hours to complete. Sheesh, then why on earth was it on the needles that long? I’ll tell you why. If I had to knit for 37 hours straight on that thing (or even 8 hours a day for a week), then I probably would have strangled someone with it. Thank goodness for other WIPs!
Oh, I’m so thrilled. Now I can turn to other projects which have been waiting in the wings. Like this:
and this:
and this:
and, of course, these:
There are more photos, but I have so much yarn in my stash and I didn’t want to upset you low-bandwidth folks. Most of my yarn was purchased while Doctor Who was on the needles. I guess I was really craving some knitting variety.
PS–> Don’t forget to hit the gallery for images of stuff I’ve finished. :-)
Done!
I did it! I finished knitting the Doctor Who scarf last night. All that remains is end weaving (which shouldn’t be too bad because I wove most ends as I went) and tassel making (also easy). Woo-hoo! Check back for pictures and commentary. :-)
Knitting Interrupted 
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