Sound Off!

I have an extremely insecure relationship with my new computer so I have put off blogging a little bit. Now I can't remember what I have and haven't blogged about, so...Roll call!

1. Featherweight Cardigan. I thought I was done with the collar until I checked the instructions and saw that I have to knit 3.5 inches and not 2 inches. Woe. So I have 1.5 more inches of collar to do, and both sleeves. I'm finding this a little depressing and so the cardigan is not getting much play, which is...obviously not helping matters anyway.

2. Moody Blues Socks for the Man. These are done and delivered. Even when you have to rip out a heel and do it twice, a sock flies when you have been knitting a gargantuan garter stitch shawl for three months. Delivery was especially quick since he was sitting next to me on the couch as I wove in the ends.

3. Veronique. Still neglected, but at least getting a little play at night when I want something simple. I am definitely reacting to the weather as I speculated in my last post, because the laceweight mohair project is getting way more play than the silk blend laceweight. The only reason the featherweight one is getting any play at all is because it is so close to being done.

4. Eris. Living up to its name. It seems that raglan shaping is some kind of knitterly secret that you are not allowed to google. I got lots of hits of people talking about it and 0 about what it actually is and what I'm supposed to do when the pattern starts talking about it. I finally solved this problem (somewhat) by rereading the directions, which actually told me what to do, kind of, and by buying The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns on sale at Nature's Yarns. All hail Ann Budd, who finally provided a good explanation of what raglan shaping is and showed me pictures that made it all clear (and now that I know what it is, I can tell you the girl sitting in front of me in training today has a sweater with raglan sleeve shaping). I have finally reached the end of the short rows, which will make my life a little easier, but frankly I am finding these cable increases a little difficult to do. I have suspicions that they are difficult because I do not use a cable needle, making it tricky to increase while cabling because of enhanced risk of dropping the stitches involved. I think I've finally got the hang of it, but I'm not really sure I like the way it looks. Also, I dropped my knitting at one point (by which I mean, I tossed it down on the couch as I got up to go feed the dog) and when I came back my stitch marker was gone and a couple of stitches were hanging off the needles. No big deal, except I put the marker back in the wrong place so I ended up moving my decreases one stitch to the left for the next four rows or so. When I discovered the error, I contemplated ripping back (in fact, I contemplated ripping all the way back to the pickup stitches and doing different increases because I'm just not sure I like the way it looks anyway) but I decided that it continued that way for a short enough time that I could just move it back and go on. I'll let you guys know how that works out. So anyway, I'll be a little relieved when I get past the increases, because they are interfering with my hockey viewing, although this seems to be beneficial to the Caps because they always score when I look down to increase.

5. Hanami. Abandonned for now, but not unloved. I want to get some of the cold-weather projects done first.

6. Flamenco. I would still like to do this project but I have to find a way to manage the charts without losing my mind first. Instead of working the charts in sequence (row 1-50 of chart A followed by row 1-50 of chart B) these charts are all worked at once - you work row 1 of chart A and then row 1 of chart B and then row 1 of Chart C and then you turn and work your wrong side row and then work row 2 of Chart A, row 2 of chart B, row 2 of Chart C, etc. I can see at once that this will drive me TOTALLY BATTY so I have to somehow figure out how I can manage all that paper, especially since each chart spans two pages, and one spans three. I usually knit on the couch with my stuff on the back of the couch or on a TV tray (I'm not a very organized invidual). I feel like I would need to knit this at a table with all my charts spread out and sixteen pattern minders to keep my place.