Knits

As with everywhere, we’ve been having very odd weather. It goes from being very spring-like to the throes of winter within days and back again. Yesterday we had snow. And not just a dusting as generally happens once or twice a winter here, but proper snow. In most areas this snow only lasted until midday, but there will still places with some snow by my house, places where the sun doesn’t get too much. It’s another very bright and sunny day and thus, very cold. There was a good quarter-inch of ice on my bicycle this morning. I went out to do a minor repair and gave up quickly because my hands just got too cold - I could drag it into my flat, but it’s not that urgent, yet.

On the knitting front, I wish things were moving along faster. I really must try to make an effort to learn continental knitting. What happens is that I remind myself of this as I’m working on a project and it’s going slowly, but then the next thing comes along and I start right away only to once again remember my plan to learn continental knitting. I don’t want to be practising this technique in the midst of a project as I am sure my gauge will change.

I sent off the hat to my sister, but had a hiccup when righting out the zip code and managed to put the zip code of my alma mater (which is just up the road, but still). Argh. Hopefully it won’t cause too much of a delay. I haven’t picked up the Cinnabar scarf in a week or two. I really must pick this back up as I want to take it to Prague and that’s not all that far off (when you consider how slowly I knit and how easily distracted I am!). The socks would be farther along if I didn’t manage to forget a number of yarn overs in a particular round which meant tinking to put these in place.

However, tinking stitches when you are knitting two socks on a single circular needle? Not easy. It involved getting out some DPNs to move the sock in question on to and tinking back, making sure not to tink too far back, and then reknitting, again without going too far forward. And then getting the sock back onto the cable needle, oi. I’d like to say it was because of the half glass of wine or the exhaustion I’ve had this week, but it took some serious mental acrobatics to figure out how to get the sock back on the needle correctly so that I could continue knitting both at once on the same needle. I’d like to say that I hope this doesn’t happen again, with this project or any other, but I know me and I suspect it will - must pay better attention to how things are placed!

Oh also I was reversing the entire chart to have a mirror image sock (e.g. pattern reads k2tog k3 yo k5 ssk), but I noticed that the decreases on the second sock were standing up versus lying flat. I still don’t really understand why this is the case, but now that I’m only reversing the stitch pattern versus the stitches (e.g. k2tog k5 yo k3 ssk), things look better. I am not fixing the standing up stitches as they are in the first repeat of the pattern adjacent to the toe so no one but me will see it. This has also helped very slightly with the looseness, but it’s still bigger than I would expect. I really can’t knit it any tighter though, unless I move to a smaller needle and I don’t have it! Progress is actually further than the picture below, but trying it on again last night, I think I’m going to have to start over and use smaller needles, as it is just way too baggy despite knitting tighter than pattern gauge. However, before I do that I may get distracted knitting some other socks with my yummy new purchase!

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