I hope I think better of these.

At least before I get too far into them. I don’t want to have wasted too much of my life.

I want to make some fair isle socks, and rather than follow one of the perfectly good and tasteful patterns available out there in the world, I’m inventing them myself. It appears that my self-loathing is spilling into my designing brain. But, I suppose I will never get good and be able to make subtle, attractive colourwork if I don’t practice on something vile first.

I was also thinking of inventing a story to explain my choice of motifs but so far all I can think of is heart attacks and police tapes. Not very socky.

Anyway, I’m working on them inside-out which has done a lot to even out my tension (which has been a problem before with stranded work). I also have one of those cool thimble things that keep your strands separate as you knit, which is excellent for me. My problem now is that I do not know how I’m going to turn the heel because I can’t purl with the thimble on. I think I might frog what I’ve done so far and do it again with a plain white toe and heel – I have more of the white, and I’m willing to take the risk that a single-strand heel will wear out faster. I mean, they’re going to be horrific anyway, right? I should be willing them to break just to spare the world from the horror of seeing them.

Fests of October.

I like October. The weather is changing, my knitted wardrobe is soon to come into steady use, and the month itself has such a pleasing and adaptable nature. I’ve decided to join in on a couple of internets-related projects which lend themselves beautifully to the month in question – Blogtoberfest and Socktoberfest. The idea of each is to:

Blogtoberfest – post a blog post every day.

Socktoberfest – play with socks every day.

Roughly speaking, anyway.

I’m going to start by combining the two – one of the favourite applications of knitting fests like Socktoberfest or the Ravelympics is finishing off the lingering unfinished objects. Somewhat coincidentally, my guilt-ridden UFO was a pair of socks. So I finished the last six rows this evening. Apart from the fact that the cast-off row looks (and feels) like it was done by a demented chimp, I’m quite pleased with them.

Done to my own (toe-up, short-row toe and heel) recipe. If anybody is interested (!) leave me a comment and I may perfect and share it in the name of the blessed Socktober. And that would be another post for Blogtober. Probably two considering the errata I would almost undoubtedly need to publish. Win all round.

Three FOs in three days, bitches.

The socks had been going for a couple of weeks, but the wristwarmers and hat were done in 48 hours. WOOO.

I would tell the story of their creation but it was basically I sat and I knitted and all of a sudden, I had new objéts. Ba-baaa!

Happy new year.

These have been dark days.

O hai.

I’ve had a terrible time of it recently. Not the move, which went swimmingly. Nor work, as I’ve been on holiday the last couple of weeks.

It was the knitting what done it.

For a while, everything I started went wrong. Socks looked like penises. Jumpers looked like plungers. Colours pooled into vomity splodges. I just didn’t like anything I made. It was depressing as hell. I began to wonder if knitting was really the thing for me.

But then… I finished this:

 

And then I went a knitting show, bought a crapload of wool, from which I have so far made this:

And now an on-the-way-to-failcardigan is becoming this:

I feel so much better.

Knitting lessons I have learnt the hard way #163

When knitting with a chart, work out all the row counts before you begin, and stick to them.

I’ve just been at Stitches and Hos at the Hare and Hounds and had to spend the first hour or so tinking 14 rounds. I then only managed to get 16 rounds done correctly before I had to dash off to the bus. If I’d just checked the row counts on the bloody chart, I’d have seen where the increases were supposed to be being made, so I would have known exactly how many stitches I was supposed to have in any one round, it would have been much easier to confirm the precise location of the errors in the chart and I would not have had to painstakingly un-knit approximately 700 stitches.

But I didn’t, so I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t and I did. Sigh.