To Rip or Not to Rip?

That’s often the biggest question when it comes to a project that’s just not going to plan. In this case, it’s a pair of mitts. I bought the pattern on Ravelry and while I loved the original design, the measurements were never going to work with my (apparently) freakishly small hands. At its widest, the mitts hold a circumference of 68 stitches, but a little mathing showed that even with my smallest needles (2mm), knitting at my usual tension, anything over 54 stitches was going to be too big. And there’s no point knitting mitts that’ll just slide off your hands, right? Right.

So I did what any passionate, obsessive knitter would do and rewrote the whole pattern. This meant redrawing the image and rejigging the lettering and fixing the decreases and resizing the thumb hole and basically just starting all over.

Which I did.

But now I’m not crazy about my colour choices (big surprise there, I hear you say) because I feel there’s not enough contrast. And for all my careful math, I feel I could get away with a few more stitches in the circumference. Those floats make the mitts quite snug.

So. This means I’m faced with two options: knit on, or frog. I’m leaning towards frogging. I’ve yelled and raged and had a cry and now I’ve entered the final stage of acceptance and I think that means frogging the fucker and starting over. What would you do, O Blogverse? Ever had a project you worked so hard on only to end up frogging and starting over? C’mon, spill. Make me feel less incompetent and we can commiserate together.

(This is the first mitt, by the way, just before beginning the decreases.)

Hectic

Another week has rolled around and while summer holidays quickly approach, it seems that life has thrown the SNB bloggers a curve ball.

Instead of things starting to wind down we’ve got exams, work and relatives to try to add to our already busy days.

We’re so busy that no one was able to go to Starbucks last week! It’s been at least a year since that happened!

So, with this in mind, we’ve decided to take the summer off from the blog.   Don’t panic though, I’m sure I won’t be able to contain myself when I finally finish somethimg (other than a washcloth) so hopefully you’ll be hearing from me…

As for right now, I’m drinking tea and stuffing my face.

Bliss. 

The great WIP-pression

Come on, admit it. You know that feeling. You just finished that one project you were really excited about. It knit up way too quick. And now, you don’t know what to knit.
You have tons of WIPs. But they don’t seem all that exciting at the moment.

Okay, I might have made up the term, but the feeling can’t be new to any knitter. Or crafter in general, really.

In any case, it’s where I am right now.

The exciting project that knit up too quick? Libran, although I call mine Katy Perry. The reasons for that may or may not become obvious when you look at the project page.

The WIPs? Oh, so many.
There’s the MKAL from last fall, 8 clues, and I’m still stuck in the middle of clue 3. Every time I look at it, I just think ‘Meh.’
There’s the shawl I started just a few days before Christmas last year, and worked on furiously at the time because I had nothing else with me, but now I can hardly bear to look at it, because there was a death in my family at the time.
There’s the gloves, gorgeous pattern, but so detailed, my brain hurts just thinking about it.
There’s the second Yggdrasil Afghan – seriously, what was I even thinking when I cast on A SECOND ONE???
The CAL with only one block and the edges to do? I kind of don’t want it to end just yet, but I also kind of do.

So, yeah… Here I am, nothing to knit. Nothing to crochet. Nthing to stop me from biting my nails while watching that one heartbreaking episode of ‘Supernatural’ for the I-stopped-counting-long-ago’th time.

Here I am, smack in the middle of a great WIP-pression.

The WIP of Doom

Last week I finally finished a massive wip of mine. This shawl took me just over two years to finish. It was a nightmare. The pattern wasn’t written very clearly, at least to my understanding, none of my stitch counts matched, I felt like I was flying blind. But I knit into the darkness and came out – only slightly scathed but somewhat traumatised – on the other side.

I love the yarn. It’s Zitron Filigran lace in the colourway Indian Summer.

I had received one skein as a birthday present and, a year later, when I decided I’d knit Ipomoea, I searched desperately for another skein. I found it, and cast on immediately, knitting alternately from each skein to blend the slight variation in dye lots. I knit and knit and knit…

…I knit through one summer, and then through the next. I knit intermittenly through good times and not so good times, and through the pregnancy and birth of my third child. And then I decided it was time. It was time to finish the fucker once and for all.

Pardon my language. Ahem.

Fourth of July weekend I was in my mother-in-law’s house with the kids, and I had just about had enough of this shawl. Since the final chart no longer made an ounce of sense, and I was sick of making up the lace repeat from looking closely at the picture every row, I made the decision to cast off.

 

It was glorious.

A few days later, I had a brief opportunity to block it. It took up most of the kids’ bedroom floor.

 

But I’m proud of the result. I’m sad it didn’t work out, but this wip of doom had had a good run and it was time to move on.

 

Onto the next adventure!

Know Your Wips

So I’m typing this while trying to feed my 5-week-old and thinking about all the things I should be doing. And I don’t mean cleaning the house. I’m talking about all the wips I have piled up on my (tiny) sewing table. They’re just crying out for some attention. But first, it’s bedtime for my other two children. This nightly ritual usually takes at least an hour, if not more. I am blessed with sleepless children, I guess…

But let me start again. Where was I? Oh yes. The wips. There’s a wip for every occasion! I’ll introduce you to them:

The Social Wips: These are the wips that travel well. They fit neatly into nappy bags or tote bags, they’re easy to whip out at a moment’s notice (did ya like that pun?), and the pattern is preferably something repetitive that requires little thought. In this category, I currently have a garter stitch scarf and a mostly garter stitch shawl with just two colours. Both of these are easy to knit while waiting for the kids to get out of school, waiting at doctor’s appointments, or for knitting while reading subtitles. As you do.

Mostly garter stitch shawl. This is the Batad pattern by Stephen West.

The Serious Wips: In this category, you have your lace. Or cables, or lace AND cables, or anything else that requires thinking or a delicate hand. I sometimes drop a lace stitch while sitting on the sofa, so I’m sure as heck not gonna be knitting it on the bus. Or around the kids. And I’ve ripped back many a row because I was too busy chatting to pay attention to the chart or pattern. This is why it’s taken me over a year to get halfway through one of my beaded lace shawls, and several months to make progress on a pair of cabled socks (even knitting them two at a time).

The cabled socks that aren’t much further along than this.

An example of a (finished!!!) lacy beaded shawl. this one took five attempts to get past row 10 because I was silly enough to bring it to my knitting group and then yapped away, oblivious to mistakes.

The Longhaul Wips: I’m sure there are many knitters (and crocheters) out there who can churn out jumpers and projects with giant swaths of fabric in a weekend. I am not one of them. I will likely never be one of them, because I keep having to put my children back to bed! Anyway, this is why I call these projects – blankets, cardigans/jumpers, etc. – longhaul projects. The lace cardigan I’m knitting has been on the needles for an embarrassing amount of time. I *may* have gone through a couple dress sizes in that time….

The Quickies: These are those ‘quick’ projects that really shouldn’t take that long. Think of that hat, those mitts, or that baby jumper that you thought you’d just cast on in between projects and whip out in no time. (Unless, of course, you’re me. And then that project tends to take twice as long because your toddler pulled it off the needles, or you discovered you’d done the decreases wrong, or it turns out the yarn you’re using isn’t the best suited to it after all.) But most of the time, these projects are relatively quick and immediately satisfying. Like a crocheted cat butt.

And who doesn’t like crocheted cat butts?

Anyway, there you have it. I find it’s useful to have a variety of projects on the needles, because you never know when you might need some ‘easy’ knitting, or something to offer a new challenge, or just a little something you rustled up over the weekend.

And now I’m off to concentrate on my most important wip….

 

…which resulted in this:

G’night all, and happy knitting!