Mortaine’s Blog

I frogged Swatch #2, because it turns out I did it wrong:

Swatch #2: Stockinette Stitch

See the ribbing at the bottom there? It turns out, that’s supposed to be K1P1 ribbing (it’s K2P2 as shown). Frogged and reusing the yarn for Swatch 1, which I also frogged earlier.

Going on a recommendation in the TKGA group on Ravelry, I decided to re-start with Swatch #3, because Seed Stitch sometimes needs a smaller needle. This is my swatch #3:

Swatch #3: Seed Stitch

See all the little holes in it? Those aren’t supposed to be there. Aside from going down yet another needle size (which would mean knitting worsted yarn on size 4’s… not my preference), I don’t really know how to fix this problem. I snugged up all the stitches as I knitted them. Perhaps re-doing the swatch at a different time of day will help.

I also cast on and knitted about an inch of K2P2 to re-do Swatch #1 last night.

And as long as I have you here, here’s an update on the sweater-of-fear progress:

Susie Hoodie Sweater

I’m now at the waist shaping decreases. I am deathly afraid that I will run out of yarn, given the size of this sweater. I already know how many stitches I can get out of a skein of this yarn, so perhaps I should count up how many stitches it takes to make the whole sweater. Except I’m afraid that number will be so high, I will shove the sweater into my bag and never look at it again.

And a closeup of the cable pattern:

Susie Hoodie Sweater: Cables

The shawl I’ve been working on is going, albeit slowly. I have 42 grams of yarn left out of the 100 gram skein, which means I am more than halfway done. According to the pattern as written, I can cast off at any time and have a human-sized shawl.

Bold Casual Shawl

That’s it. I have a long ranty rant about yesterday and how technology kicked my butt, but suffice to say that the death of my keyboard was only one in a long series of instances of technology beating me up yesterday. I lost by 6 points for the day.

Gratuitous sock yarn picture: machine washable Jitterbug yarn in Popsicle colorway

You’re just going to be wowed by my productivity this week (yes, I am trying to do these weekly).

I bought a purple binder and put the instructions into it:

I found some downloadable knitting journal pages and printed them out:

I put swatch #2 into a sleeve protector (it’s still unblocked!)

No, really. It’s like a progress report. Except not much like. Maybe I should call this one a status report, since there’s so little progress.

I’ve been told this process is easier if I blog about it on the way. One of my friends once said that I was the kind of person who, when doing something for the first time, I invite an audience along for the ride, even though what I do might be utter crap. This is completely true– I believe in the process of learning and try/fail so much, that I’m willing to fall flat on my nose in front of a crowd (and I have!)

Anyway, here’s the progress so far:

I knitted Swatch #1 and 2. Swatches 1,2,3, and 14 are supposed to be knit with the same yarn and needles. The only difference is in the stitches, so you can compare them and see “why is stockinette different from garter?” Swatches 1 and 2 are garter and stockinette, respectively.

Swatch #1: Garter Stitch

Swatch #2: Stockinette Stitch

[Please ignore how crappy Swatch #2 looks-- neither one has been blocked yet.]

Now, allow me to ramble about what has been going on with these two swatches.

First, I started Swatch 1 and knit the ribbing. I noticed something that I had noticed on the sweater I made, the sweater I failed to make, the socks I was knitting at the moment– in fact, everything I make that isn’t in lace gauge. I have “bumps” or ridges in the back of my stockinette. In other words, when I try to knit a flat piece of knitting, there are ridges in the back:

Rrrruffles have rrrridges!

I learned, from reading about tension problems in the many useful resources on the TKGA web site, that knitting is not supposed to have those ridges. I was shocked. I thought they were decorative. I thought they were why people complain about purls. I thought…

Well, anyway. Never mind what I thought. Knitterly denial is a powerful thing.

The problem was, the TKGA web site discussed lots of ways to fix your stockinette, assuming your purls were looser than your knits. Looser? I looked at my stitches. Only if being looser meant they were smaller, tighter and more cramped looking. In some places, my purl stitches disappear they’re so much tighter than the knits.

I knew I was in trouble.

I turned to Ravelry. And here, let me state, again, that there’s no resource in the world that’s been as helpful to me as Ravelry. I’m going to have to figure out how to cite Rox on Ravelry in my references when I do them, because she’s the one who led me to this information:

Until a week ago, I was a Combination knitter. This means, in essence, that although I knit normally for an English-style knitter, I wrap my purls around the needle backwards, and this means that not only don’t they have enough yarn to form an even tension with the knits, but they’re also a bit twisted from the knits.

Who knew?

Well, probably people in my knitting group, but when you crank out projects anyway, nobody cares about how you did it. The truth is, in knitting, this little difference doesn’t mean all that much (if you swatch correctly, you will adjust for tension problems as you knit your garment to fit– this is why my sweater fits even though it has uneven tension). Except in two places: the depth of my heart, and the TKGA Master Knitting program.

So for the last week or so, I’ve been wrapping the purls the other way. Two things happened when I did this. First, I found it very hard to switch. I mean, you try doing something so much it becomes muscle memory, and then change it!

Second, magically, my purls had the same tension as my knits.

Glory hallelujah!

Anyway, I’m going to re-do my Swatch 1, because I also went back and re-read the directions. As it turns out, I didn’t weave the ends in correctly, so I want to re-do the swatch with the correct weaving-in.

At 50,104 words, my NaNo novel is not really finished, but it is 50,000 words, and I did wrap up the primary storyline. There’s an escape sequence I should add in if I want the story to finish with satisfaction. But as it stands, the main conflicts are resolved, just not satisfactorily.

I wrote a Johnny Theremin novel, but somewhere around Chapter 4, I started deviating from the script. By the time I finished (with 33 chapters), I was so far beyond the original outline, and flying like a fat man on a sleigh. I had a great time, really enjoyed my characters, and will, of course, do this again next year.

Also, stay tuned for the Big, Fun, Scary Adventure. 2007 was the inaugural year, in which Chris Baty challenged everyone to do something Big, Fun, and Scary in their lives. Even though I didn’t formally sign up at the time, I think we can all agree that I’ve embarked on a Big Fun Scary Adventure this year. And so, I will sign up for next year, to do something big, fun, and scary– something I haven’t done before, something I’ve always wanted to do. I just haven’t decided what that thing will be. I’m taking nominations, though. It’s got to be something I’m not already doing. My sister said “Travel,” but I think that’s already in the cards, so we’ll set that one aside for the moment and say “yes, and…?”

And yes, I realize the thing I really *should* do is: more walking and lose weight. But it’s soooo cliché!