the elves are afoot
It's only 111 days until Christmas, and I'm neckdeep in preparations. There are numerous projects clamoring for my attention, but right now I'm focusing on my knitting. Unfortunately, I seem to be ripping out more than I knit.
You see, I owe my nephew a pair of mittens. Last christmas I made him a hat, and meant to make the mittens but didn't get time to even start them. So I stuck a note inside the hat telling him that mittens were forthcoming. There were two problems: 1) the hat barely fit him (I followed a pattern, I promise!) and 2) I never quite got around to making the mittens. I hoped he forgot about it, but no such luck. Last time I saw him, in June, he made mysterious motions miming the pulling on of a pair of mittens. So, yeah. I'm just going to make a whole new hat/mitten set. This year I have a blue wool that I like, and I was going to do a cream stripe at the bottom. I started it about three times, and just could not get the right number of stitches on the needles I wanted to use (this is my first time trying bamboo needles). So that was three rip outs.
Then, last night, I had the brilliant idea of doubling up the yarn to increase it's bulk. Lovely idea, and I had a bit of lovely heathery wool that would look perfect with both the blue and cream. So I cast on and started knitting. About 20 rounds into the project I decided that no, this hat really IS too big; it's going to fit my (very large-headed) husband instead. Ripped it out. Now I knew EXACTLY how many stiches I wanted on those blasted needles. So I cast on, knit merrily away...and glanced down. Entranced by the DVD we were watching (Match Point), I had forgotten to cast on a whole needle's worth of stitches. So now I was 20 stitches short.
At that point I ripped it up one last time, then decided that instead of casting on again, I would just leave it and instead work on ripping out a piece of mohair fluff that was too big. Mental note: don't make mistakes on mohair. It's the PITS to rip out.
You see, I owe my nephew a pair of mittens. Last christmas I made him a hat, and meant to make the mittens but didn't get time to even start them. So I stuck a note inside the hat telling him that mittens were forthcoming. There were two problems: 1) the hat barely fit him (I followed a pattern, I promise!) and 2) I never quite got around to making the mittens. I hoped he forgot about it, but no such luck. Last time I saw him, in June, he made mysterious motions miming the pulling on of a pair of mittens. So, yeah. I'm just going to make a whole new hat/mitten set. This year I have a blue wool that I like, and I was going to do a cream stripe at the bottom. I started it about three times, and just could not get the right number of stitches on the needles I wanted to use (this is my first time trying bamboo needles). So that was three rip outs.
Then, last night, I had the brilliant idea of doubling up the yarn to increase it's bulk. Lovely idea, and I had a bit of lovely heathery wool that would look perfect with both the blue and cream. So I cast on and started knitting. About 20 rounds into the project I decided that no, this hat really IS too big; it's going to fit my (very large-headed) husband instead. Ripped it out. Now I knew EXACTLY how many stiches I wanted on those blasted needles. So I cast on, knit merrily away...and glanced down. Entranced by the DVD we were watching (Match Point), I had forgotten to cast on a whole needle's worth of stitches. So now I was 20 stitches short.
At that point I ripped it up one last time, then decided that instead of casting on again, I would just leave it and instead work on ripping out a piece of mohair fluff that was too big. Mental note: don't make mistakes on mohair. It's the PITS to rip out.
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