Nov. 19, 2006 - Tales of woe from the knitting front
The knitting news is very bad.
First, the sock.
It's the Anastasia sock. Isn't it pretty? Everyone who saw me knitting it exclaimed about how beautiful it was. It's one of those patterns looks fancy, but it's ridiculously easy to knit. Note the pink waste yarn at the top, we'll get to that.
However:
Apparently when you have big feet, you also have big heels. It fits nicely all up my foot, then starts straining as we near the ankle. See how that row of eyelets that is on the same diagonal as the heel is pulled to the max? It's like little diagonal tourniquets. Not attractive and really not comfortable. I noticed this not long after I got the heel done, but blindly forged up to the cuff. Knitting denial.
I'm not giving up on this one. I didn't bind it off, but just used some waste yarn to hold the stitches. I'm researching heel methods in the hopes of finding one that will fit me better. I may just need to increase my heel stitches for a few inches before I get to the heel. I started working on another toe-up sock, Widdershins, that uses a heel flap, so we'll see how that one fits. Once I find a roomier heel, I'll rip back and reknit the sock and make its mate.
Next, the cardigan. The tie cropped cardigan that I have been working on since June. I sewed on a sleeve. It took me a very long time. Is sewing up a sweater, let alone just a sleeve, supposed to take that long? I followed the directions in Sally Melville's Knitting Experince book and I gotta tell you, it was really fussy. So there you have it:
Remember how I knit the sleeves wrong? Both of them? Wrong in two different ways wrong? Well, I fixed them and estimated that after eleventy hours of seaming, I had the makings of a lovely garment. Alas, it is not meant to be:
See how the front piece is a good 4 inches longer than the back piece? That would be wrong. Both pieces should be the same length, unless I am starting a trend of cardigans that are cropped only in the back. On the bright side, at least both front pieces are wrong in the same way wrong.
The pattern for the front pieces was confusing to me, obviously. Angela and I sat and puzzled over it, trying to figure out the increase/decrease/short row formula and we both agreed that it must be knit like so. I think even Faith took a look at it at one point. Crystal clear, this pattern was not, but I did what I thought it said. (I am certain the pattern had at least one error. The sleeves have feather & fan edging and that section of the pattern was definitely written wrong. That's a common stitch pattern and it was easy to spot the error.) I did check for errata on this pattern, but I guess I was the only one knitting it.
Nearly 6 months on this project and it sits in a heap on a shelf. Someone suggested that I just add to the back, but really, I don't have the heart for it anymore. If nothing else, I thought it would be a good learning experience. I've mostly learned that I'm not cut out for knitting sweaters. (Yeah, I say that, but I've got my eye on about 4 other sweaters that I want to try. I've got to be able to knit a sweater. Just not this one.) Eventually, I will rip out the whole thing so that I can reuse the yarn for something. Like waste yarn for bad socks.
Yesterday, I decided that even though my knitting was full of failure, my yarn would succeed! I bought some new storage containers and organized every last skein. Extremely gratifying. Perhaps I should just organize it and display it and not try and knit with it. It was also enlightening. I've got more yarn than I thought, although not as much as I want. The best part was my cotton yarn.
Woohooo! That is a 35 gallon container stuffed to the brim with cotton. I am a sucker for cotton when they sell it for 97 cents. It makes me quite happy to see it all. DH was somewhat taken aback. That's a lot of dishcloths waiting to be made in there. It's really hard to screw up a dishcloth so bad you can't use it.
Comments
Nov. 26, 2006 - Untitled Comment
Posted by Lis
For cuff-downs, the rule of thumb is that you use 1/2 the sts to make the heels -- which is what the toe-ups called for -- but to dedicate more sts for wider heels. Perhaps you could make the heel over with more sts? I had a lot of trouble getting the foot long enough when the directions said to start the heel 2" before the end of the foot. Didn't work for me. I re-did my heels 9 times before I was completely satisfied. I must say I am now the master of two-at-a-time toe-ups!
