I couldn't post last night because I was too upset. The two pieces of Tricot came out completely different widths. Like entire inches different. I don't understand it. They have the same number of stitches, I did it on the same needles... I have decided to block them and see how it goes. At this point some seeming won't be that much more work to have to do if an entire side needs to be redone. The results of just stretching the smaller one and pinning it down for an hour were encouraging, so I blocked both with pins and iron and all, and they are drying now. I was so dejected that the project stalled until tonight, so I have only just now cast on for the first sleeve (and of course knit the first row to avoid cursing my project into unfinished purgatory for all time by stopping after the cast-on). I've actually never done a raglar before, so this is kind of exciting. I am a bit nervous that my redoing the math for a different gauge will now haunt me, but I think the best thing to do is push blindly ahead following my previous calculations and hope for the best.

Today I took my first official knitting class; Japanese short-rows with Susana Hansson at Churchmouse Yarn and Teas. I feel a little like I missed out by not having years and years of doing shoulders the difficult way. Everyone else seemed to be experiencing such unadulterated joy upon seeing the technique. I definitely liked and will use it, but since I have only made one sweater this may as well be "the way" to me rather than the miracle it was for others. You can see the sample I made:



In the close-up you can see how there are no hole or weirdly angled stitches. This technique makes perfect little rows, and all without wraps!

[You can also see that I am not completely adept with my camera yet. All of my pictures are slightly fuzzy and the color is way off. That yarn is very bright blue and purple. This must be remedied before Scandanavia.]

I'm kicking myself for not just sucking it up and taking her whole "Finishing for the Finiky" class. I didn't really need three hours to pick up this technique, so it would have been nice to get the other stuff. Now I don't want to take that, though, because I've already done this part. Dang.

Churchmouse was wonderful as always. They brought us fantastic tea, and the sale bins were overflowing. Though there was enough yarn for several different complete projects, I couldn't actually come up with any of them. Exercising a level of control I didn't know I possessed, especially in the face of a class discount, I left with nothing but notions and needles.

I used my new needles to restart my Honey Lane Farms scarf. The pattern calls for size 8s, but it was very, very loose. So far this is better, though I actually need to restart it because Mark wants a different pattern (still from HLF, it is for his mother, and I did ask). I was only three rows in, though, so that doesn't matter.

posted by Anonymous @ 1:00 AM