Just Like That

The very day that I posted about a lack of photographic evidence of the things I'm working on, I found something new to share after all.  The thing I needed was right there on the dining room table, and I had been walking past it for two days without seeing it.  Typical.  My dining room table erupts piles of mail at an alarming rate.  One day I'm gonna locate the continuum rift conducting these piles and plug it up for good.  Until that happens though, my strategy will be to manage the mail-hills by ignoring them until they become mountains.  Works a lot like the laundry heap, I notice:  Must come from the same quantum rift.

If I had opened the front cover of the latest Knit Picks catalog, I would have noticed that I had a photo for you the other day.  If I had remembered that I made a swell pattern for them due out in April, I might have visited the KP website and seen that there was a perfectly good show-and-tell opportunity right there:

This is the very same reverse-engineered pullover that I wrote about last November, finished in its proper yarn and pretty Dang Cute, if I do say so myself.  

{SOAPBOX ALERT:} I especially love that Knit Picks uses real humans to model their designs (isn't she lovely?) - I can imagine this on my sister, my neighbor, or any of the beautiful ladies in my life.  If you agree, let them know please - I'd love them to hear that showing designs on actual women instead of emaciated teenagers is appreciated by more than a few knitters. {END SOAPBOX}

I have to admit that I am still new enough to the design world that seeing something I dreamed up right there in the flesh is a real thrill.  I hope it will always feel like that.  It's not every day I get a horn of this nature to toot, so I'll just leave it like this:

Hope you like it too.
 

Prickly

I used a lot of pins to block this.  There.  I said it.  The truth is that I don't even like pinning things:  I used to be mocked openly when I was a ballet seamstress for never using enough of them.  They are fiddly, hard to hold onto, and dang POINTY on one end.  But the trouble is, if you say to someone who has OCD "Here are a few lace holes that really could stand to be opened up, and by the way, here are 3000 pins", then what you will get is this:

And This:

Voodoo Doll Knitting.  The Forest of Pin-itude. Pin-a-palooza.  Pin-tastic.

And heaven knows, it's not that I have too much time on my hands (evidence to the contrary).  I was so bored with pins after the hour and a half it took me to poke one in every single stupid yarnover that I think I may have entered a fugue state.  But I couldn't stop and leave some lace holes nicely blocked open and some untouched.  That's like playing God with lace - who am I to decide which holes are block-worthy and which are not?  So in the end the only fair thing (and the only thing that would allow me to sleep last night) was to block open every single hole in the lace.  And every single picot on every single edge.  Phillip smirked at my pain and asked if I'd read any Clive Barker lately. 

I do like the way this is shaping up, skin perforations aside.  You may remember from a previous post that this is a new project for Spring/Summer.  I'm using the incomparable Blackwater Abbey 2-ply worsted in Old Purple this time.  Big Fun, in spite of what Phillip is now referring to as "Your Pin Problem".  How do porcupines make love?  Carefully.

Launch Failure

It happens to knitters all the time:  They start out full of great expectations and positive energy, and before the cast-on is done, something's gone sideways.  At least, that is what I have been telling myself for the last two days, as I struggle to Knit A Hat.  Real rocket science, this.  Clearly I am in over my head.

The yarn, by the way, is Noro Kureyon Sock #180, which I finally looked up online because I wanted to be able to curse it more specifically than just "YOU @()(&!) **! hat".  Now I can say "YOU @#()*) Noro Kureyon Sock #180 !*&#@%^hat".  Not that it helped much.

Attempt the first had me working toward a simple watch-cap style, until a small bystander commented that "berets are way cooler, Mom".  Far be it from me not to be cool.  Of course, the change in shilloutte required math.  No problem.  I just needed a change in percentage, divisible by 10.  Only took me half an hour and two calculators.  I am seriously flummoxed by numbers, and I can't believe how often I have to dig my way out from under them when I knit.

Attempt the second began with two ends of the same skein of yarn.  Huge tactical error:  After the first color change on each end, the pattern disappeared when one strand changed to Orangey-Rust, while the other strand changed to Rusty-Orange.  Couldn't have done that on purpose if my life had depended on it.

Attempt the third commenced after re-winding one of my half-skein balls to the other end, and a brief entreaty Ombrella, the patron knitting god of color-change yarn.  Naturally I jacked up the pattern and worked four rows before catching it.

Attempt the fourth found me repeating the mantra "Yarn is my Friend" and rocking in place as I got the colors to contrast properly, the number of stitches right and the pattern to repeat:

No wonder people think knitting is hard.  Watching the gyrations knitters go through on the path to nirvana must be really scary for those on the outside.  I am telling myself that I needed more stillness around me than I had, to get this hat started in fewer tries.  Too much chaos does nothing to complement meticulous patterning on size two needles.  Being out of town, the rigors of attending my daughter's sporting event, and hotel-mattress-induced sleep deprivation are this hat's afflictions, not its maker's lack of skill.  Really.  I think.

Madrona is this week, and I am so stoked to be going.  I can feel the energy gathering here on the west coast as knitterati converge in Tacoma.  I am signed up for classes with Elspeth Lavold, Beth Brown-Reinsel, Lucy Neatby, and Stephanie Pearl-Mc Phee.  Something good has got to rub off in that kind of company.  Also, I get to go on a wee vacay, which is feeling a bit overdue.  Good thing I have this swell "@#()*) Noro Kureyon Sock #180$!" hat to work on.