Saturday, January 08, 2005
Knitted Lace

Why do people say knitting lace is relaxing?

Challenging? YES

Interesting? YES

Relaxing? NO!!!!

Here is my Seascape Shawl:


When I am working on this, all dogs must be out of the house, the TV off, my husband not in the room.

I am a GOOD knitter. A VERY GOOD knitter. I have never met a pattern that scared me or that I felt was beyond my capabilities. I have even knit lace many times. I finished both Charlottes Web and the Gypsy Shawl easily. But non-repetitive charted pictoral lace is close to my breaking point.

Come to think of it I don't like intarsia either.

Knitting Issues

I have issues with ALL my knitting right now. I feel like I am making no progress on anything.

The problem is that everything I'm working on is slow going.

I like to see progress. I NEED to see progress.

The Total Maze Cardigan. Each "row" is approxiamtely 400 stitches. Plus it's garter stitch which knits quickly but grows slowly because of the condensed row gauge. I've been working on it steadily for over a week and I have an inch done.

Fuchsia. Each round is 200 stitches. Not too bad but it's a mostly cotton yarn which requires (me) to really watch my tension. And it's ribbing which is always slow. I have done about 3 inches since picking it up last week, but when I realize how much more I have to do I get discouraged.

The Shawl. We already talked about that. I am making progress. I'm on row 91. A little over 200 stitches per row right now. But it's tiny yarn on big needles which always seems to make for slow going.

Color on Color. Really I shouldn't complain about this. Anything where you are spinning the yarn first, is going to be slow. And I did finish the first color

But there is a problem. Of course there is a problem.


The blue yarn is what I spun. The orange yarn is Paternayan Persian, the yarn specified in the pattern. I was trying to spin a yarn as thick or slightly thicker.

I did not succeed.

Finally there is this.

This ratted mess is a skein of Interlacements New York. It is for a t-shirt I was going to start new Year's Day.


I adore Judy's yarns but I NEVER get a skein that is skeined correctly. NEVER. No matter how carefully I place them onthe skein winder and remove the ties, they always seem to double back on themselves part way thru the ball winding process.
(I never have this problem with any other skeined yarn. ONLY Interlacements.)

If it's Toasty Toes or some other "normal" type yarn it's easy to handle. This is Rayon ribbon. As I was trying to figure out what was wrong with the skein, it slipped off the swift and instantly began dancing across the floor and ended up like this.

This is what I have managed to wind off so far:


That represents 2 HOURS of my life.

Do I attempt to salvage the ribbon and make the planned sweater, or just trash it??

Guess which way I'm leaning?

IT MUST BE TIME TO START NEW PROJECT!!
Stay tuned.

Comments

Sue asked in the comments if I ever spin the Sammies hair. The short answer is YES. I'll give the long answer in the next post.

On a Saturday Morning


After failing to get her Daddy up so he could give her a morning cookie (its their "special morning routine"), Raven gives up. That's Pumpkin off to the left.


Anne at 9:44 AM        
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