Weekend Report

The coffee pot rock sock is flying.



I've got maybe a couple of inches left before the toe.



But, the Christmas knitting was not entirely neglected! I have almost finished one (1) orchid mitt:



It just needs a thumb.



I'm wondering, a little bit, if I did something wrong, missed an instruction somewhere. If you look at the picture of the back, it seems like the whole pattern would look much better if the triangle in the top lace pattern centered over the orchid pattern beneath it, so the whole thing comes up to a point, which right now, it does not do. Looking closely at the picture on the pattern (which is not easy, it is kind of small and the yarn is variagated), it looks like it IS centered over that orchid piece so...I'm not sure what I did. Maybe I missed an instruction? Ravelry is down for maintenance so I can't look at other projects to see. It's really bugging me, but the recipient probably won't notice...should I go back and rip it out and redo it, or let it go and do it the same on the next one?

I also worked on the scarf for my mom when we went to the football game last night, but I will not bore you with a picture since it looks exactly the same, only longer (about 10" now).

I have to decide what to do for Thanksgiving knitting. I guess I will probably take both the coffee pot socks and the scarf for mom and see which one I can handle working on. The scarf is not hard, per se, but I have found that it does in fact require some attention, even with the pattern memorized. I found myself wishing I had something from Wrapped in Comfort on the needles, becuase the stitch manipulations aren't very difficult on those and the bigfoot shawl I worked a while ago was perfect for take-around knitting. I do actually have several skeins of Jojoland in various purply shades sitting at home for just such a project, but alas, such a project would be for me and all my personal knitting is on hold until the Christmas knitting is finished (except for the socks).

I took Tretta to church on Sunday, but I was too late. The lady I was making it for, the sister of my friend, passed away this past week. I was surprised at how heart-wrenching I found the news. I've never met the lady, never spoken to her, but I felt a horrible loss, not only because I felt bad for my friend who had to lose her sister, because my knitting had connected us and I felt like I was really losing somebody personally. My friend told me that while going through her sister's things, she found the original Odessa hat I knit back in April, and she is going to give it to another friend that has cancer, so that it will go on. I took Tretta to one of the ladies in my church who collects things for the hospital that she works in, and she is going to have one of her friends that works in the cancer ward find it a good home with someone who maybe doesn't have a lot of money to spend on things like that. I felt so full that I was ready to go home and buy a whole stash of yarn and beads to make more with. Maybe I have finally found the charity knitting project for me.

Thinking Through...

...Is apparently against my personal philosophy.

I was in kind of a mood when I got home last night around 10 and I needed a fix, so I pulled out the yarn I bought to make the Orchid Lace Mitts that are to be a Christmas present for a friend and cast on. It...did not go well.

Issue #1: I disregarded the instructions on the tag that said that handwinding was recommended.



This was probably dumb, and I acknowledged that to myself at the time...but ignored it anyway. I spent a great deal of time last night untangling the yarn I pulled from my center pull ball, since it refused to come smoothly.

Issue #2: This yarn is not particularly elastic. I knew that the silk would not be very bouncy, but apparently I did not adequately research the properties of cashmere. I'm a little concerned, since I do not think that cutting off circulation at the wrist is particularly conducive to warming hands.

Issue #3: I am a freaking idiot at 10 p.m. I have a general rule that I stop knitting at 9 unless it is utterly stupid, mindless knitting. Inevitably when I break this rule, I screw up. Therefore, casting on a new project after 10 was just ASKING for trouble. Sure enough, I managed to, within three rows, turn my work inside out AND start working with the tail end of the yarn instead of the part of the yarn that was actually connected to the ball. I didn't notice until I came to the end of the tail, and...it was kind of a long tail. I had to undo two rounds, but it turned out not to really matter because when I finally got back to working with the right piece, the yarn got really hung up coming out of the ball, and while I was trying to get it loose, it broke. All attempts to splice it back together failed miserably, and in the end I pulled the whole thing off the needles, flung it from me, and re-cast on (over two needles held together, because I was concerned about issue 2), because I am both stupid and unable to admit defeat. Had I waited, it might have occured to me that maybe I should cast on with the tail on the outside of the yarn cake, but it didn't, so I'm sure I will end up in the same situation once I have three or four inches of the thing knit.

All of this, I could get over, but I really am concerned that maybe I made the wrong choice of yarn. I really wanted something decadent, but I'm just not sure this is going to work out. Do I keep going and have a little faith becuase really, you can't tell anything from the first couple of rows anyway? I could ditch it and use the other skein of Gloss lace that I bought for my mom's scarf (on which no progress has been made, and I wasn't ever really sure I would need a second skein anyway, and even if I did, these mitts aren't supposed to take that much). I probably even have enough Lane Borgo-whatever Cashwool left over from Scheherazade, I could use that. Not sure it would wear well enough, though. Decisions, decisions.

On the upside, the coffee pot rock socks are cooperating nicely now. I think, though, that if I were doing it over I might go for a slightly tighter guage. But, they're on the smallest needles I own now as it is, and with the holidays coming up, buying more needles is not really on my to-do list. The socks ARE going very quickly since they are not patterned, but...but...then I will be out of simple knitting. I do have more sock yarn in the stash, but nothing I'm really terribly excited about. Some Cherry Tree Hill that I harbor some ill will toward due to the torture that was knitting the potpouri sachets I made for my friend back when I first learned to knit. I expect that they would not be nearly so torturous now, but they did drive me kind of crazy back then, and I have not forgiven the yarn for its treachery (even though it had nothing to do with the yarn and everything to do with the fact that this was supposed to be a really fast project but it turns out that, having been knitting for only a couple of months, I was kind of slow ass at it).

I do have some Twisted Sister sock yarn that I got at Yarn Market a while ago, but I wasn't as happy with the color as I expected to be, and I think it's hand wash, and I do not hand wash socks.

Oh! I know! I bought some Blue Ridge Yarns sock yarn at Nature's Yarns! So that will be the next set of socks after I zip through the coffee pot rock socks (watch me still be knitting coffee pot rock three months from now, now that I've said that).

Victory and Defeat

I did in fact finish the second pair of socks Sunday night, and even got it kitchenered and the ends woven in, and now all the socks need is a washing before they go off to their permanent home. 3 FOs in one weekend, woohoo!

Last night, I decided to go ahead and cast on the Coffee Pot Rock socks, so that I would have them started to take around with me, and then I planned to get back to the Christmas knitting (my eyes are starting to slide right past the shawl so as to avoid the panic I feel over the short period I have left in which to finish it), but the socks did not cooperate. I wanted an easy pattern so I picked the bluebell rib from Sensational Knitted socks. I cast on and started a 3x3 rib at the cuff. I knitted and then I frowned, and then I knitted a little more, and then I panicked. The colors were not cooperating. I had a half and half sock. If I could have trusted it to stay that way I would have kept going, but I just didn't, so I pulled the whole thing back and went back to the pattern book, looking for something that would travel a little more and encourage the colors not to pool. I picked another pattern out of More Sensational Knitted Socks, and cast on again, but something wasn't working right and I went back to the chart of size vs. guage that tells you how many stitches to cast on, and it was different in MSKS than the one in SKS. Also, I had not paid adequate attention to a line in the directions so my stuff was wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

I pulled it out, cast on my usual 64 stitches, knit the cuff in 2x2 and went to plain stockinette after. The colors are now behaving as they should. -_- The stupid thing is that when I looked at how the colors all snugged pretty on the cast-on I thought to myself that maybe I should just do plain socks and enjoy the way the color melted together, rather than using a rib or something with texture that would break up that smoothness, and disregarded the impulse. Obviously, the yarn was trying to tell me something. Okay, okay, you win, plain stockinette it is.

Then I went to bed, and another day of Christmas knitting slipped by with no progress.