Tuesday, August 22, 2006

the slippery poncho

i have been working on my daughter's poncho since late spring. the pattern is quite easy. a bunch of yarn overs and k2tog. no problem, really. except for the yarn.

she picked this lovely to look at ribbon type yarn that verigates from pink to green with globs of glitter spaced at regular intervals. it snagged on my crystal palace bamboo needles; it snagged on my hangnails; it snagged on it's fellow glitter globs. needless to say, knitting it has been quite the challenge. except that it looks great knitted up. it will make a beautiful poncho, albeit a snaggy one. and it will look great on her.

about a month ago, i dropped a stitch. it was an amazing reaction. it was like watching a run in a stocking, it just took off and didn't stop. the stitch just kept slipping farther and farther down. i sat there amazed that in a blink of an eye i lost about 5 inches of knitting. and then i panicked. i picked up the dropped stitch and wove it back up to the needle as well as i could, just so it would stop slipping. the next day i took it to my LYS. the master knitter there fixed it rather quickly, i thought, and i was off and knitting again.

until last week, when once again i dropped a stitch. and again it ran. i almost had it reasonably fixed until i fiddled with it to much and it wasn't fixed. so i left it for a week and picked it up again tonight. ended up ripping another 5 or 6 inches out, getting it back on the needle and having it look like a train ran through it in different places. sigh.

so tomorrow i will take it back to the master knitter at my LYS, have her chuckle at me while, hopefully, fixing it so i can be up and knitting again. and though i would like to be DONE with this poncho, i will have to patiently and mindfully knit it, in hopes there will be no more mishaps and my beautiful girl will soon be able to wear it.

until then, i think i'll have a cup of tea and work on that shawl.

Friday, August 18, 2006

the elusive search

well, i am on to the next step.

up to now i was an accessories knitter...shawls, scarves, items where gauge did not matter, except for a pair of socks that are still on the needles after 4 months. but i have taken the big leap. i am making myself a shell. which means i have to be on gauge. which is being a bit elusive.

the pattern says, 5 stitches to the inch on size us5 needles; the yarn says, 5 stitches to the inch on size us5 needles; the swatch says 7 1/4 stitches to the inch on size us5 needles! oy vey! so i try size us6 needles, size us4 needles (what was i thinking!), size us7, the list goes on. but at size us9 i may be getting it. the swatch is more relaxed, it drapes a bit differently, it is not quite as uptight as it was at size us5.

so i may find 5 stitches to the inch fairly soon. until then, i think i'll knit a nice shawl.