Saturday, September 15, 2012

Sweaters and Socks

I've been doing lots of knitting lately. I'm on the shoulder of my last sleeve of the sweater. I've decided to leave the first sleeve as is. The person I'm making it for wears sweaters a lot like I do, with the sleeves pushed up out of the way of a computer keyboard. Since the error is fairly low on the sleeve is will get lost in the smooshing. I think that since it is a Christmas present and I want some element of surprise I'm going to wait until after Christmas to post pictures of the finished sweater. (I'm going with that excuse rather than the fact that it usually takes me a few months weeks to sew a sweater together, knit the button band and collar, and weave in all of those stupid little ends.)

The other reason that the sweater will have to wait for assembly is that this arrived in the mail yesterday.


My intention was to order the needles for my husband's Christmas sweater and immediately start working on that. After two months of working with cream yarn I want color. (There's a tiny voice reminding me that my husband's sweater is green which is in fact a color, but it's being drowned out by a whiny voice saying socks are fun and fast and we want fun and fast.) Since this is a pair of socks for my husband and he's given me permission to make socks before sweater the sweater will just have to wait.

*If you're wondering the yarn is Stroll Fingering in Harvest Tonal from Knit Picks.

Knit Picks did not sponsor this posting. 

Saturday, September 8, 2012

Imperfection

There is a legend that Persian rug makers will intentionally put a mistake into their rug as a reminder that only Allah is perfect. As I've been working on my sweater this phrase has come into my head. This sweater is the first time that I've done cables. Over all I think I'm doing pretty good. (We're just going to ignore the fact that every repeat of the cables on the back, the first piece I did, is a different length.)

Then I got cocky. I started thinking that I knew the pattern. I started thinking that I didn't need the stitch counter and stopped counting every row. This worked great until I stopped for the night, picked it up the next morning and realized that I'd forgotten to include eight rows in the counter the night before. I didn't panic too much, just added in the rows that I'd forgotten to add and started knitting. Two inches later I discovered when I started work my row counter was actually right.

As a knitter I should probably know how to frog and then start knitting again once I've pulled out enough stitches to have pulled out the mistake. (I should point out that I'm fully capable of pulling out my stitches and putting them back on the needle, they just end up twisted the wrong way half the time.) Since I struggle to undo inches of knitting when it's flat knitting I'm terrified of frogging cabled stitches. I asked my husband what he thought I should do. He looked at it for a minute and then said the beautiful words, "What mistake?" I trusted him and continued happily knitting. After all, only God is perfect so little mistakes aren't so bad. Then I got to the end of the sleeve and my dear husband says, "Oh, that mistake. Yeah, it's pretty noticeable."

So let me put the question out there to all of you. Do I knit the sleeve over again or do I give it to the recipient saying the sleeve is that way as a reminder that only God is perfect?

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Coffee Top is Done!!!

I'm starting to think that this quilt might have a curse on it. My first goal was to get the entire quilt done over the summer to show at my quilt guild's fall guest night. I was humming along nicely and only had to sew the rows together before the top was done and my machine broke down. I got my machine fixed and  managed to finish the top in time for guest night. (I even had a week to spare.) Then the week before guest night I start coming down with some coughing illness and am to sick to go to guest night. I'm slightly worried to see what new disaster will come up when I actually start to quilt this thing. (I can't decide what I want to do for quilting though so I have some time before that occurs.) Despite all of the problems with this quilt I'm absolutely loving how it's turning out. I can't wait to cuddle up under it this winter (or next if the quilting curse is bad.)
*It's not the greatest of pictures, but with the curse that is this quilt what else did you expect. I promise when I take the finished pictures they will be good. I've even started plotting locations for this quilts photo shoot.

If you're interested in the pattern it's based on this quilt on Moda Bakeshop's webpage.