Tuesday, May 29, 2012

I need some encouragement


or…

Am I Really That Bad at This?

I'm working on another Konnor hat, this time the Jacques Cousteau Hat (named that, I think, because there are photos of the man wearing one that looks like it). I'm making it out of some lovely Patons Silk Bamboo, in Plum, which is a soft wine color. I cast on and knit the bottom five inches of it just fine. Then I started on the crown, which I've knitted now four times.

If you're a knitter: I keep screwing up the decreases. The first two times I attempted it, I put one of the markers in the wrong spot. (Yeah, okay. But it was the end of the round, and just two stitches away from the beginning-of-round marker, so apparently I thought it wouldn't matter. It did.) That caused a kind of cascading failure. I finally realized the problem, ripped it out and placed all four markers correctly. Now all I have to do is work up to two stitches before the marker, SSK, slip the marker and knit the knits and purl the purls until two stitches before the next marker. But, apparently, I just sail past markers at random intervals without doing the decrease, because when I stop to count the stitches between the markers, it's rare that there are the same number in all four sections.

If you're not a knitter: I keep screwing it up. It appears I have the attention span of a gnat, and just stop paying attention. Frequently.

So I rip it out to that same bottom five inches, then re-knit it. Occasionally I drop a stitch in my struggles and have to get out the crochet hook and painstakingly thread it up to the knitting needle again, hoping I keep all the knit stitches as knits and the purl stitches as purls. I was doing really well last night, counting every few rounds to make sure all four sections were even, when I got over confident and went a few rounds without double checking. Yeah, you guessed it.

So I'm here to freely admit this stupid hat is kicking my butt. It shouldn't; it's just not that hard. But…

If you're a knitter: …I can't seem to pull off four evenly-spaced decreases for ten rounds in a row.

If you're not a knitter: …I keep screwing it up. (I know, I said that already. But it bears repeating.)

So please give me some encouragement, if you've got it. Or suggest a new hobby.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Yarn 'ho'

Yeah, I think that's actually how it should be punctuated. I'm not saying "ho" like it's in quotation marks. It's not like "ho-ho-ho" or as in, "Land ho!" I'm saying I'll, you know, do things for yarn.

There's a contest going on. I should be ashamed (but I'm not very).

Speaking of knitting, I've been making hats. Give me a day or so and I'll post some pictures of them.

In the meantime, the hockey playoffs continue (Go Devils!), basketball playoffs continue, and I continue, myself, to refine our baseball game bag (it's a process, and has taken more time than any reasonable person would expect).

And you thought this would be all about knitting!

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Need a new knitting book (a post all about knitting)

First I made this. (The panda one. I never could make their ear pattern work, though, so I ended up just making up my own. It looks fine.)
From Stitch Nation Yarn
I'm ready now to make the little mitts.

I thought it would be a good idea to make them two-at-a-time. For any non-knitters, there's a problem knitting socks and gloves or mittens, in that after you've made the first one, the thrill is sometimes gone. You've risen to the challenge, climbed that particular mountain, and you're no longer inspired by the pattern or the yarn. It's sometimes referred to as Single Sock Syndrome. (Really.) So two-at-a-time seemed the way to go on these little mitts. I wasn't sure how to do it, but I thought it wouldn't be any big deal. There are all kinds of books about knitting two socks at the same time (Single Sock Syndrome is not an uncommon problem), and mittens (and gloves, too) start the same way as socks, as long as you begin at the cuff. I recently learned how to use two circular needles to knit two-at-a-time socks (and let me tell you, that's the only way to go for two-at-a-time), so I thought I'd do it that way. I just needed to know how to cast on.

…and that's where the problems started. How is it done?

I've got this book, which explains how to knit socks on two circular needles, but only one sock at a time.
I've also got this book, which explains how to knit socks two-at-a-time, but on only one circular needle.
I've got this book, which explains two-at-a-time and two circular needles—but only from the toe up, which doesn't help at all with the cast-on, the part I'm not sure about.

I'm still looking through my library, but I may have to look instead for new parents who are only concerned if one of their baby's hands stays warm.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Is it incestuous to direct you to my other blog?

If I suggest in my personal blog (this one) that you read a post on my business blog (that one), is it incestuous? Cannibalistic? Unseemly?

The truth is, I kind of like the wording of that post, and I certainly don't want to just duplicate it here. But I do, oh, I do want everyone to read the 15 Grammar Goofs infographic!

Let's see, I could add something here…maybe talk about what I've been writing lately. Um, do you want to know how fiduciaries of employee retirement plans can mitigate their risk? Anybody…?

Okay, then. How about a picture of what I've been knitting? I just made this, really, really quickly. My beloved niece has a godson, 16 years old, who is being treated for testicular cancer. (Yeah, that is in the vicinity of the worst thing I've ever heard.) He's losing his hair from the chemo and she contacted me to see if I would knit him a hat. He wanted a beanie, skullcap kind of thing, "like the Zac Brown Band wears." How'd I do?


The light-colored yarn is camel, special to me because I bought it in Beijing. (Seriously, there was a yarn shop right down the street from our hotel, can you believe it?) I bought the yarn as a souvenir, a special memento, and I was saving it to make something for myself. But it's incredibly soft (who'd expect camel yarn to be soft, right?), and that's pretty important in a chemo cap. And using part of that yarn to make a cap for Rebekah's godson makes it even more special. I found a pattern, adapted it, knitted the thing, blocked it and got it in the mail in three days. (Be impressed with that. I'm a slow knitter.)

Or you can listen to what I just bought on iTunes. Yes, the official video is on YouTube, too. But, uh, it's the song I like.



All right, all right! Now I'm just yammering. See, I didn't really have much to say…except go look at my other blog! (Unseemly. Definitely unseemly.)