Lately I've been knitting quite a bit, but have been fickle; work on this for 2 days, that for 5 days, and oh ya! pick up that sweater that's been laying around...
I started some Cashmere mitts recently which I can't reach at the moment so there are no pictures. I'm using Ann Budd's Handy Guide to Knitting patterns and melding the gloves w/ the mittens to make convertible mitts. The fingers inside are all 11 rows tall and knit in 1x1 rib on a size larger needle than the rest of the mitt (mitt on 2's, fingers on 3's). I improvised the 1x1 thing and I'm not sure it was necessary or even a good idea, but it's done on both and I'm not turning back. I also added the mitten top too high on the back of the hand. At this point there are sort of 2 camps - 1. meh! this was an experiment and they are totally wearable, be proud of your accomplishment and learn from it; 2. this is really really nice yarn and you know you can do better. Start over maybe from the other end of the ball so you don't have extra yarn tails to weave in in obscure places. I think I'm going to let them age a bit and decide which camp is best. Now that I've gotten them written down, though, I must admit I'm leaning toward #2.
After getting most of the way through the mitts my mom and I did some post-Thanksgiving shopping and I got a Hiya Hiya size 1US 9" circ. I thought, "those look almost evil!" followed almost immediately by, "I HAVE to try them and find out. I'm using mystery yarn that my friend bought for me in Germany. There is potential that it is some line from Opal or that it is something very similar. Nevertheless since the needles are like slippery toothpicks glued to each other I opted for a simple pattern - waffle rib from Vogue Stitchionary I. I'm about 75% done with the heel now, but would be done if I'd just started w/ the short row heel. I don't especially like short row heels, so I try to avoid them, but when I tried to work a heel flap... well... slippery toothpicks.
Finally on the knitting front: I picked up the 178 stitches for the wasteband of the purple sideways sweater! I've never had issues w/ picking up stiches before. But then I don't think I've picked up 178 stitches along the side of lace before either. That may have been more painful than knitting the entire sweater twice. And now those 178 stitches of 80/20 Cotton/Merino want to slide right off of the aluminum needles they're on making it very difficult to knit them. Oh, I am so close to victory on this thing, I can taste it!! I just want to finish it. Grrr to you aluminum needles. If you weren't called "Diana" I wouldn't even keep you!
Awe. I love you, too sweater.
Dang. 30 minutes.
No comments:
Post a Comment