R.I.P

Riiiiiiiiiiiiip.

Shh. Did you hear that? That sound? Listen...

Riiiiiiiiiiiiip.

It's the scariest most terrifying sound....The stuff of nightmare's and knitter's ghost stories. A project moaning in it's last throes of death, as it sinks despairingly into the frog pound, unraveling at last, returning to it's base element. The dreaded R.I.P - I'm not talking about simply ripping back a little bit to fix a mistake, I'm talking about all out total unmerciful shredding. We're sending this thing to the stash and back.

At this point you may ask, what project has fallen prey to such an evil fate? Good question! Remember Hey Teach?

I knit it, I sewed it up. Yes I got gauge, but it simply didn't fit. Not going to lie, it was too big and nothing was going to change that. Rather than try to salvage the project, I've decided to completely frog it and knit something else instead. This isn't anything against the Hey Teach pattern, I liked it and may knit it again someday. but for now, I've been there, done that, and now I just want to move on.

The frogging process was hard. Harder than I thought, and I'm not talking emotionally here, I'm talking technically. I did way too good a job seaming - and for now on I'm TOTALLY going to go easier on the weaving-in, because I ended up having to just cut the yarn in places in order to get it to unravel. Yikes! Oh well. I've already cast on a new project with this yarn, fingers crossed it'll have more luck!

Stitch Counts.

Hello Blog,

I appoligize in advance for the rather longish length of this post. I have to rant to you about how much I really, truly dislike my swallowtail right now. But first, something a bit happier.

Progress on the Cursed Scarf:

Not even halfway done with the scarf. Hurray!

And, look what I can do now...

New skill achieved!

I have been given crochet lessons by several different friends in the past, and attempted to teach myself, but it's been slow going for me. Last night I had yet another lesson and met some well-earned success ^_^ Now I just need to learn the names of the stitches I've just made, and how to read those confusing crochet patterns, and I'll be good to go!

And now, swallowtail.

Let me explain what happened. I was supposed to do 14 repeats of chart 2 and end up with 195 stitches, but instead I ended up with 208. Not noticing I started chart three and found that I had 6 stitches left over at the end of the row. I ripped back to the end of chart 2, thought about the merits of ripping an additional 6 rows or enlarging the shawl, and decided to keep going until I reached 255 stitches before starting chart 3.

Right now, I only have 218 stitches. HOWEVER. I feel like I have a problem. Deep deep in my bones I know there's a problem. I have an even number of stitches and yet I'm not coming up with too many or two few stitches at the end of each row, despite the fact that the pattern - and every note that I've read on ravelry - tells me that I need an odd number of stitches. I can't find a flaw in my knitting anywhere, but the numbers don't add up, I don't want to keep knitting only to have to rip back again, but what else can I do? I'm struggling to find an answer - one that I'm sure will be very simple and obvious - but until I do figure it out. I hate my knitting.

Until next time

Theo

To frog or not

Hi Blog, Theo here.





I feel as if perhaps I was leading you on with my last post. It's true that the duplicate stitch has seen some success, but in actuality all is not well with the snowflake arm warmers. The yarn isn't actually itchy.....
there's just a lot of tension and it feels.... funny to the touch. But not all the time, depending on the time of day I want to frog it and never-ever touch it again, or I feel that it's actually soft and I'll enjoy wearing it against my sensitive skin.
Furthermore, some days I hate the way the duplicate stitch bunches when I bend my elbows, while other days it seems normal and un-problematic. I'm so conflicted I don't know what to do. Should I dump this project and commit the yarn to something else? (perhaps a fair isle hat?) or should I persevere and learn to love the FO?





I don't know, I feel like I need some distance.