Thursday, February 01, 2007

What's that knitting rule again?

I am knitting Fred a scarf.

I've been knitting for over a year now, and have managed to learn how to knit lace, and knit socks (which at one time seemed to me to be the pinnacle of difficulty; the idea of fair-isle was overwhelming), but this $%&*# scarf is driving me batty.

First, I was using icky acrylic camouflage yarn, because he digs the camo. He picked a five-cable braid that just wasn't showing up properly in the patterned yarn.

So we switched to a dark purple merino (yay!) and started over. It was curling in on itself, and he says he likes a scarf that lays flat, so I ripped it out and changed the design.

This time I got about 8 inches of the sucker done and ... dropped a stitch. I thought that I had picked it up properly, but after a couple more rows it was obvious that I had not, because the proper crosses just weren't there. I put in a life-line and frogged it back and picked up the correct number of stitches....and realized that I hated the way it looked. Seed stitch on either side, reverse stockinette, and the cable in the middle. Muh. It would have looked great if it were going to be part of an afghan or something else, but on it's own, it was just kind of meh.

Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit. Although I did get to play with my ball winder, so that was fun (Zoe liked it too).

As I was casting on this scarf for the fourth time he says "You know what I'd like? A sweater. A cashmere sweater. Black. With red celtic cable panels up the arms, and a red celtic design on the front."

*sigh*

5 comments:

Angela said...

Bless your heart:) Tell him he get's only one project per year...he'll live.

Ang

Amanda said...

I'm going to learn how to knit after tax season. I'm a little nervous about this picking up and dropping stitches thing. I like crochet in the fact that if you mess up, you can just rip it out and do it over pretty easily.

Angela said...

Knitting is the same way. Easy enough to rip and do over. It just takes a little longer to knit, so you like ripping less...a lot less.


Ang

Meghan said...

I feel so left out when I read knitting posts.

I mean, I tried... but failed miserably. I hear everyone knits in Carrboro (where we're moving) - so, perhaps I can find a knitting sensei there.

Yonners said...

Remind him that you hold the sharp pointy sticks. I'm really bad, when I knit scarves for men, I usually just do a 3x2 rib or something.