Neener, Neener

Take THAT!!! You dastardly ball of sock yarn! You thought you could outsmart me? Huh? Didja?

Well, I am SMARTER than wool. So there! No more of your shenanigans. You will be a sock, dammit.












Hey, sock yarn? Maybe you could take some deportment lessons from the Rowan Calmer. See how well-behaved this is? Sure, it's difficult, but it's the right kind of difficult. You know, challenging me to be a better knitter. Instead of challenging me to keep from dousing it with gasoline and finding the matches.

Just sayin is all.

Disbelief

With the focus of a neurosurgeon, I cast on the mock ragg sock the third time. I counted the stitches compulsively to make sure I had the proper number. I divided the stitches over four needles and counted for another eon. I knit the first row of ribbing with laserlike precision to make sure I didn't screw up the pattern. Again.

This might go down in history as the most perfect cast-on I've ever achieved. Each loop gracefully spiralled around the needle in an exact duplicate of its neighbor. It was the freakin' Rockettes of knitting.

This is how far I got before the yarn defeated me again.




















Do you see that? That travesty, that insult, that mockery of careful and attentive knitting?

No?

Look closer.

















Not only is there a knot--

Not only is that knot tied to resemble a three-year-old's crayon scribbles--

But they didn't even come close to preserving the colorway striped patterning at the join!

ARGH!

My yarn hates me.

head*desk

As Long As We're Off the Subject

Now you know how Mister Six -- the child who confesses that he likes to dare himself to do dangerous things -- fell in the river last week.

Back on topic....

I can't seem to make my brain work today. I've rejected a few queries and started one revision letter, but my head just isn't in it. No focus. So I finally decided to call it a day, for now. Most likely I'll take another stab at that revision later.

But for now, I'm trying to start that second mock ragg sock, and so far, my lack of brainpower is bleeding over into the cast-on. First time, I twisted the cast-on when joining. Well, that can happen to anybody, right? Rip and re-cast. No biggie.

Second time, I managed to knit a half dozen rounds or so of a k2p2 ribbing before I realized -- DOH! -- needle three was completely out of sync with the pattern. All the stitches that should have been knit were purled, and all the purls were knit.

But I did manage to knit enough to realize another gaffe. This very long colorway has two broad bands of jacqard. One is followed by a dark navy, and the other is followed by a light denim blue. Guess what! I picked the wrong one to start the sock with. And while I don't mind slightly fraternal socks, I do want these to match. So I had to rip (again) but I would have had to rip again anyway.

I'm taking a short break before I cast on the third time. Apparently, I cannot be trusted today to do anything as complex as counting to four and correctly distinguishing colors. sigh....

Pomp and Circumstance

We interrupt this knitblog to bring you Miss Six, who graduated from kindergarten today. A stunning accomplishment. Complete with a talent show, cookies, and red fruit punch.

This child was so adorable on stage that it nearly made me weep. What is it about a herd of children garbling songs in unison that tugs our hearts like that? They're not in tune, they're barely comprehensible, and the oddly choreographed hand gestures usually end up with some kid getting biffed in the eyeball.

Yet, it just might be the greatest show on earth.

Not even I could knit through that.

A Bit of Progress

In addition to screwing up the short rows on my husband's sleeves, I finished one sock. Well, except for the kitchenering. Have any of you seen my tapestry needles? I apparently took them out of my needle case and didn't put them back.
















And here is the chemo cap, Shedir. Any of you who have knit this pattern know that this paltry little swatch represents about six hours of knitting. This pattern is extremely slow. This is the second time I've knit it, and familiarity with the cable chart barely makes it any faster. Barely. But I still love the pattern. It's from Knitty's special breast cancer issue, if you're interested. It's not found in the regular Knitty pattern archives. Just google "Shedir Knitty" and you'll get to the pdf with several patterns from that special issue. I'd link to it for you, but my right clicker isn't working, and I'm too lazy to type all that address mumbo jumbo into the link field.

Plus I have a crapload of work to do today. I have piles -- piles!! -- of manuscripts to get through today. I don't know where they're coming from all of a sudden. I was within two manuscripts of being totally caught up last week, and now all of a sudden, blizzard. So I probably will be shoveling paper instead of knitting today.

Can This Marriage Be Saved?

This is a close-up of one side of the short-rowed sleeve cuff for the sweater I love enough to call "my husband." Except he'll be sleeping on the couch tonight.
















And this is the other side.

I have a long list of things that are pissing me off today. In order of annoyance, we have:

1 and 2. These cuffs. I'm supposed to use short rows to create a bell curve of sort that will drape over the back of the hands. Problem is that the wrapped stitches look like absolute crap. There is no way, none whatsoever, that this passes the prancing pony test. Let alone passing my own personal version, the crawling pony with a magnifying glass test.

Anybody have any ideas on how to fix this? The stitches are wrapped as the rows are shortened, and the wraps are picked up as the rows are lengthened. What you see there are distorted stitches. Not wraps. Usually, I don't bother picking up the wraps, but this pattern called for it and I wanted a smooth fabric, undistorted by the "mock purl bumps" of unpicked-up wraps. I can't figure out what I did to distort the stitches, and I've knit these cuffs twice now with identical results. (Thereby proving that consistency really is the hobgoblin of little minds.)

3. My camera -- I mean, look at those pictures. What the heck is going on there? Blurry, and not even close to the actual color of the yarn. I snapped dozens of pictures under several different lights/backdrops, and the two above were the best I managed. Look here for a more accurate view of the color.

4. The *&$%* cicadas. OK, they were an interesting diversion at first. But I'm over it now. I want them to shut up that infernal racket and, for pete's sake, stop flying into my car when I am trying to drive. They're going to make me crash. Into their beloved trees. With a firebomb.

5. Blogger. Ate two of my posts this weekend. I managed to save one (Note to Self) but had to sacrifice the pictures. Why does blogger hate me? (pout)

6. The DVD player which, for completely mysterious reasons, refused to play the movie I rented for tonight. That would be the movie I wanted to watch while knitting that breast cancer Shedir out of the Rowan Calmer which I couldn't show you because Blogger hates me. Anyway. This is a new DVD player. It should not be misbehaving like this. Plus, I really do just want to watch a movie and knit. I need it!

I know this is a grumpy post, but it's been that kind of day. I've had real problems demanding my attention today, not just the petty things on my list. Which makes it doubly insulting when the petty things go wrong.

Tomorrow will be better. It has to be. In the meantime, sorry to vent like this.

And seriously, can anyone tell me how to fix my husband's short rows?

Note To Self

Dear Self,

In light of today's escapade at the yarn shop, I feel compelled to remind you of a few things.

Yes, yes. It was aminor escapade. Especially for you. You do tend to buy yarn by the truckload. Not by the cutesy little lunchbag-sized load. So two skeins of sock yarn and a single skein of Calmer is really not that bad.

But you see how that rationalizing works? You say, oh it's not so bad, it's just three skeins. And then the yarn follows you home despite your earlier decisions to abstain from yarn shopping for a while.

You remember last year at Stitches Midwest? In the market -- the market with millions of skeins of yarn, all of which made you nearly hyperventilate with yearning? You remember how paltry your $150 yarn budget seemed in the presence of such yarnbundance? Keep your money close, Self, so that you can really splurge at Stitches this year. You know you want it that way.

And don't give me any crap about sock yarn not being stash. Admit it. Seven six-quart bins of sock yarn are jampacked -- you can't even fit all the sock yarn in there any more. That's forty-two quarts of socks waiting to be knit, plus the odd skeins hidden in your knitting bag and cookie jar.

That's stash.

And that's why you joined the Summer of Socks. Because you want to lighten the sock yarn load a bit. And clear out some space before Stitches. You'll need it for the STR binge you have planned. Try to remember that.

Also try to remember that you don't have to buy every single bit of teal sock yarn in greater Chicagoland just because you're knitting a teal cardigan that you really, really love. You can only wear one pair of socks at a time, you know. And it's entirely possible that you won't want to wear the cardigan every single day to match your avalanche of teal socks.

Now, the Calmer, that we can all agree was excusable. You have a family member in heavy treatment for recurrent breast cancer. She will not be with us much longer. Neither will be her hair, and she needs a chemo cap. A very soft one. In a pretty, uplifting, feminine color. Nothing in the stash will come near to accommodating this project, so a single skein of Calmer is perfectly acceptable.

Especially when it's on sale. As was everything else in the store. But that doesn't mean you can buy it all. No, you can't go back there tomorrow, even though the sale is still on.

Now, Self, go knit what you've got, and try to get a little Self-control. It's only two months until Stitches. You can handle it.

Very truly yours,
Me.