Updates

Summer. Busy.

Knitting projects complete: 3 (except two of them were for babies so they weren't that big but they still count as completions, HA HA!!)

Softball games won: 6 (Our best year yet. We finally got shirts and I think they were lucky.)

Piano recitals: 1 (my piano teacher told me I made people cry, and I'm not quite sure I believe him, but I like the idea)

Appliances Purchased: 2 (but I think one doesn't work. Stupid Craigslist)

I also: taught 3 people to knit (I hope they stick with it!), grew some flowers, helped others with their vegetable growing, botched some recipes, painted some walls, and mostly had a lot of fun with my friends and family.

What a great summer so far! Fall is looking like it's going to be fantastic too!!

Hmm...

Looks like I'm no good at blogging in the summer. I'll try to get better.

One Down

I finished my sock, but two feet means two socks. This is the problem with making a pair of anything, two. Once you get done with one you have to start all over again and make another.

Catastrophe!

The other night I was happily knitting along admiring my speedy progress on my pretty socks when I looked down and suddenly there it was, a dropped stitch.


Oh the horror!!
It looked like I dropped it several rows before I noticed it and had been knitting along oblivious to the impending unraveling.
In this situation any good knitter will tell you there is only one thing to do: swear...and then fix it. Which is what I did.



To fix this error I had to capture the runaway stitch and then loop it through the strands of yarn between the stitches still on the needle. Ugh!



A few minutes of swearing and eye-strain later and ta-da! Fixed



Yay! No holey socks for this girl!

Finito!

I finished my beautiful new-old green sweater.



I like it. It turned out okay, but now I have to block it and I'm not so sure about that. There is no ribbing on the bottom so the edges are all rolled up, and when I put it on unblocked it looks funny and bad. Blocking is the only option.


I don't like blocking so much. It seems like a lot of work. That may be a silly sentiment considering I just knit the whole sweater but...well...I'm not as sure of blocking as I am of knitting. There are many different ways to go about blocking a sweater (blocking, if you don't know, is giving a sweater the correct shape by forming it when it is wet, or something like that because like I said I'm not really sure). I could wash it then shape it, or shape it then iron it or douse it then pin it or....who knows...sit on it until it turns into a felty wool pillow. The choices are endless and I am not a good decision maker when there is no absolutely correct decisions (actually I'm not a good decision maker most of the time, I generally always choose the fun and exciting option rather than the smart, rational choice).

In the end I choose...

...to start a new sock

Isn't it lovely? Oh, it's going to be great and the best part is that socks don't require any blocking!

New Socks!

I just finished these lovely new socks. They have a very nice little cable pattern that gives them just enough give to hug your feet and keep you warm and toasty. You can't really see it in the picture because the color of the yarn overwhelms it but I know it's there and I like it!

Beautiful

This sweater may look like a big funny lump of yarn but it used to be a bigger funnier blob of sweater that wasn't right. This is the yarn from my very first sweater project. That sweater turned out all kittywumpus and not right. There were so many things wrong with it that I refused to wear it.

You see, when I first started knitting I did it wrong. I knit every stitch through the back and purled funny too. My stitches weren't twisted but there was no way I could have followed a pattern with decreases.

I found out when my mom watched me knitting one day and said "Katie, you knit funny." I was very offended because obviously I was doing everything right, didn't my work look nice? She calmed me down and said yes my work looked very nice but I was actually knitting backwards. She then showed me how she (and everyone else in the world) did it and how that was different from what I was doing. She explained to me calmly that while I could continue to knit in this backward fashion I would have to switch around every pattern that I ever came across to suit my weirdo style. That seemed like a lot of math that I didn't want to do so I changed my ways.

Unfortunately, what I didn't realize was that my old gauge was very different from my new gauge. So when my sweater was done it was puffy on top and tight on the bottom. I tried to make the best of it but I ended up setting it aside and not finishing it. I was disappointed.

A few years later I saw it sitting forlornly in a basket and I thought "I want to wear that sweater, but not like that." So I ripped it out, wound up the yarn and started a new-old project. Hopefully this time the result will be beautiful.