Ouchie

Scarf length: 27 in

My hand and wrist were really sore last night, but I put my wrist brace on when I went to bed and it feels fine today. Guess I'll be wearing the thing a bit more often. Which wouldn't be so bad, if the velcro didn't snag on and make a mess out of my brocade bedspread. :oP I'll have to come up with something to put over it.

The pattern said to make the scarf 6 feet long. I think five feet will be plenty, thank you very much. :oP I plan to take it with me to D&D tonight since we spend ages waiting for everyone to arrive. Also, half the party smokes, so there is the occasional smoke break to sit through, when everyone goes outside and the rest of us are just sitting there.

Progress

Last night I measured my chenille scarf and I have knitted about 21 inches! I'm so proud!

I have not worked much on the one I intend for Sbodd, unfortunately. That pattern requires more attention on my part, and it is a lot easier to stab through the yarn on it. I'm also just not happy with it on the whole and it is really tempting to just start over. I have learned a lot since I started it and the beginning really doesn't look so great. I don't know. We'll see. But I'm trucking along on the chenille one so I just won't worry about it for now.

Goof-up

I made a lot of progress on the chenille scarf, but I also realized that I have been working the pattern totally wrong on both of my scarves. I did not think to account for the fact that when you go to the next row, you have to turn the work in your hand, so everything you just knitted becomes a purl and everything you just purled becomes a knit. So instead of a 4x4 ribbed scarf and a seed stitch scarf...I have a scarf knitted in alternating 4x4 blocks of garter stitch and a 1x1 ribbed scarf, respectively. GAAH. -_- They both LOOK fine, they just don't look like they are SUPPOSED to look. But now I'm confused - how do I know if I have to reverse every other line of a pattern or not? Not very many of them seem to explicitly mark their first couple lines for "right side" or "wrong side."

I was especially miffed at the Stitch-and-Bitch book, which I've been really satisfied with so far, because their instructions for doing a rib stitch DO account for this, but their instructions for a seed stitch DON'T. And they haven't, anywhere that I have found, discussed the issue in such a way that you would know to look for it in either set of instructions. :oP It took Sbodd and me and google all together a good ten minutes of confused discussion to agree that yes, I was in fact doing the seed stitch wrong. I feel a little dumb about the rib stitch because I could've figured that one out, since it was very clear that my scarf did not look like the example in the picture, but the seed stitch was just darn confusing, since the fuzzyness and shinyness of the chenille made it hard to figure out whether I was doing something wrong.

However, I have about a foot of that scarf knitted and it looks lovely as a 1x1 rib anyway, so I'm trying not to be too fussed about it. But darn, it annoys me that I was merrily doing the wrong thing all this time!

Puzzles

I ended up taking out like three rows of my scarf yesterday. I'm just couldn't quite figure out how to fix it so it ended up being easier just to back up a few rows and redo them. I am just not that saavy at fixing mistakes yet.

Anyway, I went ahead and started the chenille scarf just so I'd have something to switch to when I got frustrated with the one. It's going nicely as the thread is thicker and the needle larger, so it's almost as big as what I've done on the other scarf already. That's kind of gratifying. However, the fluffyness/fuzziness of the chenille makes it even harder to see mistakes. :oP Oh well...all a part of learning I guess. At the very least, it is nice to feel and it goes faster, and the color is very pretty. Even if it does shed some. :oP

Beginner's Enthusiasm

My knitting endeavors continue. I have begun working on the knit 4 purl 4 scarf I linked. I had a really hard time with it and restarted repeatedly before I finally figured out what I was doing wrong. Yesterday I stopped at Michael's and bought some stitch counters, which have made a huge, huge difference. They're little rings that you slip on your needles between your stitches, and now I have one between every set of 8 stitches. This way, I find out a lot quicker if I have picked up an extra stitch, or done something else stupid. The bottom of the scarf still has some visible screwups, but hey, it's a first try. I've got maybe an inch and a half of knitted material, which is pretty darn good I think.

There are tons of free patterns online and I have had fun experimenting. Yesterday I tried a seed stitch, and it went pretty well...for a while. Then I messed up and pulled it out. :oP But there is a pattern for a scarf in seed stitch using a chenille yarn that looks like fun on the Lion Brand site. I'd link it, but they require you to register to view their free patterns. :oP It is pretty and that particular yarn, while less cheap than I would prefer, comes in lots of really pretty colors.