G. Knerd

I may have bragged last night that I had picked a project for the Knitting Olympics which was, if not easy, at least possibly not hard enough to qualify for Olympic status.  Nothing in the pattern was particularly hard (except, maybe, understanding it…), the large gauge meant that there weren’t too many stitches, and it centered around a simple lace pattern that I could easily memorize.  I haven’t even been knitting on the bus or at work at all, and yet I knit the last stitch last night.

I should have known better.

This is what everything looked like when I was all ready to start blocking:

And since I like to get things really wet when I block them, everything went straight into the sink for a soak.  I was feeling so cocky about getting finished on time that I even cleaned the sink first instead of just getting a mixing bowl.

Blocking has always been one of my most favorite parts of knitting, at least whenever there’s lace involved.  You’re basically taking something wrinkled and blotchy and in no way resembling something amazing, and with a little water and a few pins you’re turning into a magical weightless sheet of fabric – I don’t care how many times you do it, it’s always going to be awesome.  I started with blocking out the top – having the lace attached to the body and double layered made the process somewhat ridiculous – if I were to do it again, I think I’d make the lace around the neck separately and graft it on after blocking.

Once I had that straight (or as good as it was going to get), I moved on to the right sleeve with its twelve beautiful points.  This is another place where, if I were to do the pattern again, I’d probably do the grafting post blocking instead of before so I didn’t have to double the fabric at all and I could make it straighter overall.

I wanted to be sure to have the same size for the left sleeve, so I tried to fold the right side in half to get six pairs of points like I had with the right sleeve.

That didn’t work out so well.  It’s hard to tell with this picture, but the farthest point to the left doesn’t actually have a pair.  Somehow, I managed to knit a sleeve with eleven points.  It took counting both sets of sleeve points about seven times each before I accepted it – the left sleeve did not in any way match the right.

Normally, this discovery wouldn’t be too bad – I’d just unpick the grafted row, unravel the bind-off edge, knit another repeat of the pattern, and do it all over again.  Given that it’s only ten rows, that shouldn’t take me more than the evening to fix.  The problem?

It’s wet.

So now, instead of waiting for my pieces to dry so I can seam them together, I’m waiting for my sleeve to dry so I can unravel it, knit more onto it, graft it together again (even though I’d do it differently if I were doing the whole pattern again, I think I should do both sleeves for this time the same – even if it’s wrong), weave in the ends again, string up the sides for blocking again, get it wet again, and then finally get to the blocking it and waiting for it to dry part.  I’ve put an extra day into the process, at least.

If there were anything I could do about it, I wouldn’t be writing this post.  If I owned a hairdryer, I’d be sitting next to an outlet gently forcing the yarn dry.

Luckily for you, my hairdryer died a couple months ago after more than a decade of being mostly ignored in the cupboard.  At the time, I remember thinking, “You know, the only reason I can think of to get a new one would be if I had a knitting project I wanted to dry faster…and even then, I can always just wait for the yarn to dry naturally.”

I hate it when the Knitting Fates take perfectly reasonable and sound arguments and use them against you.

At least everything except the sleeve is properly blocked and gorgeous.  My favorite is how the hip band just seems to go on forever.

After all, it’s almost seven feet long.  In knitting, that’s like miles!

I’ve been frantically trying to get my Knitting Olympics project finished, so I haven’t had time for a real post (and unfortunately, I only seemed to plan for one week’s worth of Knitting Olympics ahead of time…).  For now, hopefully this will tide you over:

That’s the current state of the cARGHdigan for the Blanket Thief – right at the point where I have to figure out what I’m going to do about the sleeves.  I’ve always done raglan or drop sleeves when making my own sweater patterns (mostly because they require so little calculations or precision), but for this one the Blanket Thief was adamant that the sleeve cap be set in.  He’s being pretty understanding about me randomly picking up and putting down his [at this point long overdue] Christmas present, I figure the least I can do is make it the way he wants it.

Of course, I’m not even thinking about it until after the Knitting Olympics are over.  Speaking of which…

I’ve heard that the Amish have a tradition in the amazing quilts they make, that there’s always at least one small mistake in those intricate pieced compositions, because only God can be perfect or make perfect things.  Now, given that they’re introducing these flaws on purpose, that always seemed a bit egotistical to me (kind of a “well, I could be perfect if I wanted to, but I think I’ll let God have the glory this time”), but at the same time, I kind of thought it was a neat tradition.

Then I found this:

If you can’t see it (the picture isn’t as clear as I’d like) that’s a lone purl stitch in what is supposed to be a column of knit stitches in 2×1 ribbing.  I generally do 2×2 or 1×1, so the 2×1 was giving me a bit of trouble, but I didn’t realize I’d messed it up until I was a few inches past that point.  And the pattern doesn’t really lend itself to surgery, given the “p3 tog” all over the place.

If that were the only problem with this sock, I think I would have embraced the Amish tradition and just went with it, all the while smirking about how I could fix it if I really wanted to, but…

…well, that’s not how it went down.

It all started when I got it in my head that I wanted to knit my next pair of socks with Tofutsies.

I picked a stitch pattern, and swatched to determine how many stitches to cast on.

This was the first place I thought “er, maybe this won’t work out”.  See how the picture is really pretty and elegant, and the swatch just…isnt?  That’s largely due to the fact that the knitting in the picture is severely blocked, and since my socks will, er, likely never be blocked in their lifetimes, that should have given me a clue.

Still, I thought maybe being stretched around my foot would kind of act like a pseudo blocking, so I figured out how many stitches I needed to get around my foot and stretch to get over my ankle, and I did some math to come up with cuff ribbing that would flow into the pattern, and I was off.

At this point, I probably should have noticed that things weren’t coming out like I wanted, that instead of being elegant and graceful this was just…bumpy.  And angular.  And not what I wanted at all.

I should have noticed…but I’m stubborn, so I kept going.  I thought to myself, “Well, that’s just the first few rows in pattern – after a few more, it’ll even out and look okay.”

It wasn’t until I was two and half times through the pattern (42 rows + 12 rows of cuff), that I tried it on again.  And, well, it wasn’t really getting more elegant.

Plus, around the same time, I discovered that purl stitch.  And in light of everything else about this sock, it seems like it’s just foolish to keep going.  It’s off to the frog pond for this one.

Because, you know, I’m not Amish.

I’ve been trucking along on my Knitting Olympics project, but it seems that the kitties really don’t want me to finish.  First, Monkey Kitty took apart a ball of yarn, then he chewed on the cable for my circular needle (luckily, not enough to break it), and now Bear Kitty is joining the fray – last night while I was brushing his teeth (I, er, may, in fact, be a crazy cat lady) Bear Kitty bit down on my thumb hard enough to break the nail and draw blood from multiple locations.  I’m fine (and I’m not going to horrify you with pictures), but one of the wounds is exactly where I rest my thumb against the needle tip, which…well, it doesn’t feel great.

I’m continuing to soldier on, but I don’t think my progress will be as great as it was before the injury.  I’m going to call this part of the “Fortius” part of the Olympic motto.

Remember when I cast on those socks with the Deborah Norville yarn?

Yeah, me either.  Apparently, it was in November.  Since then, that pair have been my go-everywhere, knit-anytime socks, which I finally finished last week.

This was my first time using Deborah Norville yarn, and…well, I’m not impressed.  The colors are okay, and it’s rather soft, but that’s about all I can say for it.  It’s really loosely spun, making it very splity.  I’m also pretty sure that this will be my first pair of hand knit socks to develop holes, given that the finished fabric feels about as durable as paper.

I could forgive all that, though – given that I got enough yarn for a pair of socks for five bucks, and given that my drawers really don’t need the addition of another pair of socks, I’d be willing to live with a pair that would wear out relatively quickly.  I could even practice my darning skills (or, you know, embrace the more traditional “Darn it!” while tossing them in the trash).

What I will not forgive, though, is this:

Between the two balls of yarn, there was not one, not two, but three places where the yarn was cut and then tied.  That’s six extra ends to weave in (even that I could forgive), but that also means that the color repeat was interrupted in random places and the socks don’t match (starting on the instep just after the heel).  Just look at the toes!

I’ve never subscribed to this idea of purposefully mismatched socks.  In my head, socks are a pair, and they are by definition (again, in my head) supposed to be identical.  I even scrapped quite a bit of perfectly good yarn just to ensure that I was starting at the same point in the color repeat on each sock.

Now, I’m willing to give Deborah another shot.  Given that her yarn was $5/pair at the store, I didn’t exactly stop at this colorway.  If I recall correctly, I actually have two other colorways of this yarn in my stash.  So here’s the deal, Deborah: eventually, I’ll get around to knitting socks out of those other colorways.  If either one of them shows the same behavior of random ends as this pair…well, I simply don’t have time for that kind of frustration in my life.  Sorry, my dear, but I don’t deserve that, and although your yarn is certainly the cheapest I’ve found so far, I’m also willing to spend a few extra bucks to avoid the random ends

Then again, maybe this pair were a fluke.  I’m willing to believe that.  But I’ll need the proof of both other pairs coming out just fine before I’m willing to bet any money on it.

On the other hand, I did get a full pair of socks for $5.  That’s really not a bad deal.

Four years ago, the Yarn Harlot declared the start of the Knitting Olympics – and I didn’t do it.  I could use any excuse I want about how I was in college, it was a weird time for me, I didn’t have the yarn for a good project, yadda, yadda, yadda.  The real reason I didn’t go for it was…er…well, if we’re going to be quite honest here (and when are we not?), I was just too lazy to put the effort into picking a pattern, and finding the yarn, and waiting to start until the right time, and so forth.  When I have the urge to start a project, very little can get in my way – even the Knitting Olympics.

This year, though, I’m in.  I’m doing it.  I’m signing up for the Knitting Olympics (in fact, just did, right here).  I’ve got the pattern (Anjou from French Girl Knits), the yarn (Berroco Ultra Alpaca Fine in the 1275 colorway), and the needles.  The yarn is wound up.  I’ve swatched (although I’m living dangerously, because I’ve decided to skip blocking the swatch and fudge the numbers a bit between my inability to get gauge and the lack of a size that really fits me well).  I’m ready to go.

Or, I was ready.  Then Monkey Kitty got involved.

Now I like untangling knots more than most people (I’ve actually begged some of my friends to let me untangle skeins they got into a mess), but this was not what I wanted to wake up to this morning.  Luckily, only one of the three balls was really unwound (but boy was it ever!), and Monkey Kitty didn’t break the yarn in too many places.  Still, I’ll be spending a bit of time tonight turning this:

Back into this:

Because tomorrow, I get to cast on and go to town.  This will be interesting – the pattern doesn’t look too challenging technically, but it does have lace which has to be blocked (actually, the whole thing needs to be blocked), and I’ll need to plan accordingly for that one.  Also, there’s miles of stockinette down the body – that’s the endurance section.  And then there’s the seaming, which based on the description seems fiddly at best.

Really, I can’t wait.  Except I have to.

Damn rules.

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Remember how Monkey Kitty has an extreme fondness for all things yarn and wool related?  Well, I wasn’t telling the whole story in the last post when I told you about how I’d thwarted his attempts to destroy the knitting.

See, I apparently didn’t learn my lesson about leaving hats hanging out around the house, and that night while we were sleeping, Monkey Kitty stole into our room, jumped up on the dresser, and stole another hat!  Since he was stealthy enough not to wake us, no one stopped him from actually damaging the hat, so what I woke up to that morning was this:

Now, really, that doesn’t seem so bad, actually…until you get up close with the damage, at which point this:

And this:

Plus a couple other loose ends convinced me that the hat was too far gone to be saved.  Luckily, this wasn’t a hand made hat and didn’t carry much sentimental value, so after a few minutes of cursing myself for leaving it out and Monkey Kitty for taking advantage of the situation, I moved on to thinking, “Well, what can I do with this now?”

And then I thought, “You know, I could take it apart and salvage the yarn for another project…”  (We’ll forget, for a minute, that the yarn for the hat is pure polyester and thus relatively unlikely to ever be knit by me.)

After a couple stitches had been unraveled, I got a clue that maybe this would be a messier process than I had signed up for:

It turns out that chenille sheds.  Massively sheds.  Especially when you’re pulling the length of it through the stitches to get to a point where you can just start unraveling.

After about a dozen stitches, something else occurred to me.  Something I’d read about on the Yarn Harlot’s blog just a few months ago.  Something about, er…unraveling ribbing?

Yep, that’s right – ribbing can only be unraveled in one direction (took me about 3 days to accept it, so if you haven’t had the revelation – or the failed experience – give it a minute to sink in).  Which meant that while one side of the hole I was making was perfectly fine for unraveling:

The other side was having, er, difficulties:

Sighing, I decided to deal with that problem later, and soldiered on working the hole bigger until it reached all the way around the hat:

And after that, it was pure, unraveling goodness.  Am I the only one who gets a perverse pleasure out of frogging knitting?  Especially store-bought knitting – there’s something so powerful in the idea that you can take this thing and reduce it down to component parts which you can then use to make something else.

Or maybe that’s just me.  That’s cool, I’m used to being…special.

When everything was said and done (and after doing the same hole making/enlarging process on the other side of the non-ravelable half), I ended up with a huge pile of unusable “stuff” and a few balls of yarn:

Anyone want some polyester chenille yarn?  I think I’ve gotten all the pleasure I need out of it.