is it knitter's block?...

 What to do? I thought for a minute I had a breakthrough – what if I made a swatch of the floral mesh in another colour of the 4 ply wool, you know, a leftover cone that isn’t enough for an entire project? so I’m not wasting the real stuff. I have the charcoal, it’s dark like the bilberry and would show off the stitch pattern similar to what bilberry would. Make a swatch or just go with a sleeve? Why am I even wasting time thinking about it? Jump in, make the sleeve - you can always abandon it halfway through if you really aren’t feeling it!

Oh yeah, change the sponge bar! https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-elephant-in-room.html

Read all your cheat sheets and notes…

Aw man! I just got a new order of sock yarn!

dithering...

stalling, just plain delay tactics! I’m still knitting socks (and hoping for a good hair day)…putting off making the big decision – my next project, another long, lace, button-front hoodie. The choices: wool (navy, red, willow and dark brown) or cotton (Bonita cotton in cream, tan or red and Cannelé cotton in marsh/green). I decided to go with wool for the season – it’s now pretty well full-on winter so I’ve narrowed it down to the navy – it’s actually called ‘bilberry’, maybe a bit darker than navy but with a brightness to it. I haven’t had anything for myself in navy in a very long time. Now, I’m flip-flopping on the stitch pattern. The choices: ‘me-cozy’, that very airy, diamond-in-diamond, I’ve used multiple times and still love but already have it in the dark gray wool hoodie https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2021/04/deja-vu.html .

Or ‘floral mesh’ https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2021/09/the-holy-grail.html, the big summery print I’d like to use again but does it match up better with the green marsh Cannelé? And there’s ‘Gossamer’… https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2012/01/lacy-daze.html

what to do, what to do?

socking news...

Getting back into the knit of things, I’m sock knitting – I thought I had said everything I could possibly say about making socks – on my double bed Japanese knitting machine (for the newbies out there)  but, turns out, I learned something new! I can’t possibly recap everything here, but if you type ‘socks’ into the search bar at the top of this page, it will bring up at least 20 posts of my extolling, sometimes passionately, on the subject of my circular socks and give you a couple of links to my freebie sock patterns – there’s even one or two done on the LK150 mid gauge, not circular, of course, but pretty nice.

https://knitwords.blogspot.com/2012/12/sock-it-to-me.html

Anyway, back to the present, I have been purchasing the 100g skeins of sock yarn, usually buying 2 of each colourway, especially if they are on sale and for sure, if it’s one of those with a multi-colour stripe repeat. I think I told you before that I don’t really care if the stripes match perfectly – hate to waste the part you need to pull off to get to the same place as you started the first sock with. But here I am, making a pair for a special new friend and I want them to be perfect. Got the first one done and started pulling off the yarn to find the royal stripe I started with, and pulled and pulled and I began hyperventilating about wasting so much and these are bigger, (deep breaths) like size 9.5 wide and I was worrying about not having enough and it dawned on me, I could just thread up the second cone and knit the second one from there and it would match! What do you know? Perfect, and the second pair, one off the first cone and the next one off the second - that pair matches perfectly too, no waste!

 

 

 

third time's a charm...

Yeah, I know, I’ve said that before! 

A couple of days go by, I’m mentally planning my next project. Going to knit some socks just to get back in the swing of things, I’ve wound all my sock yarn onto cones, ready to go. Before I take the wool crepe deluxe off the machine and thread up some sock yarn,  I pick up S&P and try it on one more time. That collar, the vee part, feels a little bunchy... what would happen if I made it again, eliminated pleats on the underside, just had the to-be-pleated part on one end, which would be the topside?

I’m not usually this persnickety! I wouldn’t admit this to anybody but maybe I’m a little nervous – I haven’t been out in the knitting public for over 3 years and I’m probably over-thinking!

Did I tell you the shoulders and sleeves fit perfectly?

P.S. The seminar in Pigeon Forge – it’s March 11, 12, 2023 – you can email Myra at myrean@comcast.net for details and to reserve your spot.

time will tell...

I got the last end darned in and the collar stitched down so it doesn’t look too bad. I’ll be honest here. When I put it on and looked in the mirror, it was like, OMG, MAO! You’re a blob! It was awful! I hated it! I turned sideways and hated it even more! Oh wait! Besides no makeup and a bad hair day, you’ve been schlepping around in tired, old sports bras for the past couple of years! Ar-r-r-g-g-g-h!

Time for the wash and dry. Many times, I think that’s going to make everything so much better, but I know you can’t bet on it! It’s almost like holding your breath while the laundry churns around – I think when you’re dealing with natural fibres, there’s life in there, kind of like washing your hair, it goes back to natural. So, if things are over-blocked or over-flattened, there’s hope the laundry will restore some of it! Fingers crossed anyway!

Omigosh! It worked! A little steam here and there and it’s all good! Now, if only this cold sore would go away, pray for a good hair day, put on a good bra and hope someone who can handle taking a photo comes by – we might get a real-life picture!

P.S. Thanks all, for your nice comments and encouragement! Greatly appreciated!

the neck's best...

 As I was whiling away the summer, I was thinking knitting. I have a few more long button-front lace hoodies in my head, but I did want to get finished with Salt and Pepper before starting a new project. I knew if I abandoned it incomplete, it would stay that way and I wasn’t going to do that! It’s not in my nature to quit unless I see no recourse or salvation.

After hearing from Margie about the Pigeon Forge re-boot, I was pretty excited! I had that bad collar still on S&P.  Tried it on again, same thing, felt like I was choking…took very deep breaths…and thought, well, too much fabric at back of neck so what if I shortened the depth of the centre back but still made the centre front the same  number of rows. Repinned it to reflect this and it seemed to work. Took a minute to weigh up the pros and cons of trying to salvage the collar, like ripping it back halfway and rehanging it. Gave myself a V-8 slap and said why would you try to do that? There’s plenty of yarn, what would you be trying to prove? re-knitting from the start would be quicker! And, look, now I have a photo to show what I did!

It took a short time to reknit the collar, get it attached, re-do the seaming - I was chastising myself for dragging it out so long. Patted myself on the back and went for my walk.

Options for another attempt at the collar – making a shadow-pleat version – not really liking this as I had envisioned the collar to be all gray and other than use a double strand of the gray tweed to beef up  for the shadow pleat, I thought would be to stiff and thick so ruled that out.  Could do the K6R, RTR, thing, using the garter bar to make reverse stitch lines. Yikes, MA, this is wool crepe deluxe at T6 and 180 sts wide…I doubt even you could do that now!

In the words of the old Project Runway’s inimitable Tim Gunn, make it work!