There are days when I really wonder.

In the never ending saga of trying to make Mary feel better, doctors have yet again, upped and changed some of her "stupid pills".  So far the jury is still out as to if they do anything other than make her stupid, you should ask my team about "Oh wow, she did a Mary!" or "I am hot, or cold, one of them, not sure which yet."  All this week I have wondered if it is even worth getting out of bed and trying to start my day.

Today I had proof, positive proof, that I would have been better off just not.....

Behold, seven stripes into a boring to knit, striped hoodie sweater for the first twin.

So far, so good right?  Making pretty good progress on it and it looks good so far, even stitches, no gaps at the increases.

Now take a look at the next ball of yarn.

Um, Houston, we have a problem, those are different colors!  Well, actually the same color, just very different dyelots.

Oh well, on second thought I think I wanted slightly wider stripes anyway, might as well just start over!
On that note, I am even further behind on my Christmas knitting!
~m
(TDQ looked over my shoulder and asked me if a YarnDiet is a good diet?  But of course it is, lots of fiber!!!)

In which the knitter remembers

I hope you brought a snack, this is the longest post I have written in a while!

Way back when, when Summer Squares was the current knit along for Bad Cat Designs, this knitter messed up!

I know, shocking idea that something using needles and thread would lead to errors (hah!) but this knitter had Dark Star failure! In that case it was a failure to count rows properly and instead of knitting the even number required to bring her back to the right side of the work for patterning, she accidentally knit an odd number of rows and had one section facing the wrong way.

If I recall several people couldn't tell the mistake from the picture, but I could see it.

But anyway....

I finished two more squares on the latest incarnation of the Summer Squares project.

Harp (14) and Leaf (15) :

And then measured them roughly against the bed that they will go on and decided that maybe it was time to join the squares together and figure out which edging I wanted to use!


Hmmmmmm

Maybe not the brightest of ideas!
Maybe you can tell if you click to "embiggen" (side note, I love that word and steal it from the Yarn Harlot whenever I get the opportunity!)

Yep, one lonely square upside down.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Now I am back to having 15 squares sitting on my desk, crying to be a bedspread while I ignore them.

Knowing that an entire blanket was going to be too hot to work on when the temperatures start to creep steadily upward I cast on another blanket today.

Yes, another one.

Baby blanket this time so it should be cooler to work on, and I might have decided to work another Summer Squares project for it. Golden Eye, now know as the Wilson Welcome Wrap (to be known for the rest of its in progress time as the WWW) is going to be two tone and is off to a good start. I would show you pics but I can't seem to hold the camera steady enough right now, maybe tomorrow right after work I will get some for you.

Which brings me to another idea, another stolen idea actually, I seem to be borrowing things from a lot of people lately!

Someone I know recently had a baby and for this baby, her first, there was a blanket that had been knit by I believe it was a great-grandmother before she died and stored safely away until the right moment. I liked that idea so much that even though I am not a grandmother, or a great grandmother, that I think that once I am finished the WWW I will start a collection of my own. Plenty of room in a safe deposit box at the bank to store them if I knit a lot and one day, when the time is right and I am no longer around maybe a great-grandbaby will get a handed down through time hug from me.

~M

Metamorphosis Part 2, Part 1

As those of you in the group know, new instructions were posted on Sunday for Metamorphosis.

This week was all about the sweaters, so the shawl is still sitting in its ziploc baggie.

Above you have the pullover version in a size 1. Isn't the color of that BB Toes just wonderful?

I have now divided for sleeves and converted the flat knitting into in the round knitting, with a little bit of start of round gymnastics to keep the lace pattern lined up. (I have to give a plug here for how well written this pattern is....I have been knitting a long time and was comfortable with just "flexing" the beginning of my round where I needed to without any help from the designers, but...for those who are not quite so daring there was a chart posted with suggestions for that "flex" that covered every imaginable starting point!)

You can tell from the picture that the top half of the knitting was rough blocked to double check my gauge and fit, but the bottom is all scrunched up freshly knit lace.

St Margaret progresses slowly.
Karen, I remembered that post by the Yarn Harlot last night too! I just now looked it up to link it and I did remember correctly how she put the cable back the wrong way! I think I remember that so well because, like many of her posts, I nearly choked to death on my coffee reading it! I don't know if it shows in this picture or not, but I did "sorta" decrease the noticability of the cable on the front..the rest can just stay the way they are! Perfection, it's a little over-rated in comfy house sweaters!

It is really hard to try and take in progress pictures on yourself!
More tomorrow!

~M

Photos do not lie

Sometimes, if I am being casual I will wear my handknits to work. A shawl with dress pants and turtleneck, or a sweater instead of a jacket. My customers are mostly oblivious to the fact that I have made them myself, but occasionally someone will comment on them.

A fairly long discussion was has with one of those observant customers, who mentioned that "home-made" seems to have a stigma. It is thought of as somehow less than store bought. Which got us onto the difference between "home-made" and "hand-made"......

Usually the pieces that I knit fall into the hand-made quality. The best materials I can afford, or get my hands on, hours of patiently knitting and re-knitting if I have to...and then there are the projects that teach me things, those usually get frogged and re-knit much more frequently than those that don't teach me something.

St. Margaret is obviously a Catholic School Teaching Nun!!

The first time through the beginning I was using a yarn that my cats absolutely adored...they thought it was so tasty to when my knitting was left unattended they took the opportunity to chew it up! I had barely enough of that yarn without sacrificing any to felines, so back to the stash I went.

My second time through, I completely omitted an entire series of increase...fine if I had wanted a sweater that fit across my back and didn't meet in the middle at the front. So frogged again.

Third time.....

There I am thinking things have finally settled down between us and that St. Margaret and I are going to get along.

Go on, click the picture and make it bigger!

Do you see them?

Not one, but TWO mistakes.

Here, I will help you out as members of my family couldn't spot them - of course you are knitters and have a keener sense of how these things should go, but anyway....

Mistake the first
Those two bits of cable are not supposed to touch! I knit the wrong chart way at the beginning. Now, in my defense I noticed that one when I took the picture.....
This one I didn't see until I was cropping the pictures!!!

I am pretty sure that cable was not supposed to do that.

These ones are right, and I hope they are the only ones that people notice because I am not frogging the Sainted lady again!

In response to the comment...No, Lara, I knit with metal needles so that they don't catch fire! :)

So what's on your needles?

~M

Ribbit, ribbit

If you search around the web you can find lots of tips for lace knitting. One of the biggies out there is how to put in a lifeline, go ahead google and see how many results come back, I'll wait...

Done?

How many did you get? With a very specific search I got 17,900 of very easy to follow instructions...but did I ever use them? No.

You can even find instructions for putting one in AFTER you have knit past where you want one. Less results, but still 7,400 is still a lot of help. Did I use it...well I tried but black yarn, tiny needles not much hope of catching each and every stitch, so I took my courage in both hands and starting to rip.

I frogged my knitting over the chart with the wrong-way-charlie facing down so that the beads would all fall where I could get them....and I ripped VERY slowly right the way to the last couple of rows I wanted taken out. Supporting the weight on the piece on the table I then slowly pulled out the last two rows and without moving it much (Lacey Lamb is slick and given a chance a stray stitch with a little tension on it would find my provisional cast on before I could whimper...nooooo....) picked the stitches back up on a 0000 needle. Good thing I had one of those just hanging around. :)

A quick count...oh drat 49 stitches...well maybe I will find it when I knit across, and sure enough just under half way through knitting those stitches I found two that were twisted together. Success all 50 stitches picked up right where I needed to knit one more row.

I will triple check I am on the "right" side this time around.