I must say, it’s rather sweet to be a winner. I think I like it. Many big thank you’s to Julie at Passioknits. She has a knitting podcast, in case you didn’t know it. After you read this post, go listen!

Can you tell I’m not used to winning contests? Last time I won anything, it [...]]]>

I must say, it’s rather sweet to be a winner. I think I like it. Many big thank you’s to Julie at Passioknits. She has a knitting podcast, in case you didn’t know it. After you read this post, go listen!

Can you tell I’m not used to winning contests? Last time I won anything, it was a roll of lifesavers in Girl Scout Camp. We’re talking decades ago, people. About the time I first learned to knit.

Never mind. Here’s a close-up shot of the goodies that are now mine.

Nice, eh? I’ve been a bad girl, though. While I immediately planned to create a blog post all about winning the contest, showing the photos and tooting the horn for Passioknits, it didn’t happen. When did I win these two skeins of yarn? Today, this week, this month? (Hangs head in shame.)

My husband was appalled when he discovered I’d never even emailed her my thanks. He said, “You have no social graces whatsoever, do you?” Sigh. Apparently not.

But here we are at last. Guess what else? I haven’t knit a stitch since July 31.

Why? Because I started the third annual Thirty Day Challenge! If you want to learn how to make money online by having someone guide you step by step and do it for absolutely zero cost, go join! You won’t regret it.

Am I rich yet? Not quite. Why? Because I searched for and found a great niche—but it wasn’t something I’m passionate enough about. I’m to write articles and blog posts every day about the topic, creating content. Lovely. I created maybe a dozen pieces of content, then stalled out. I let my perfectionism kick in.

That little voice in my head piped up with, “Who are you to write about this particular niche when you know nothing about it?” Yada, yada, yada. Never mind that I was researching and learning as I went. I was doing just fine, then two months passed with no progress at all. Argh!

If you want to learn the extreme evils of perfectionism, visit Flylady. I’m battling this demon in my household, let me tell you! I need to stamp it out in my head.

So where was I? Ah! During the month of August my invitation to Ravelry came in. Now I may lack social graces, but I’m not stupid. I’ve seen knitters’ posts and heard their podcasts all telling me what a marvelous and wondrous thing Ravelry is—and what a super time suck it can be.

In August I was grabbing every spare minute to do the Thirty Day Challenge on top of my tailoring, eBay selling and everyday life needs. I didn’t dare dive down the Ravelry rabbit hole! So I’m saying to myself, “Just a minute. Soon as the month is over…” Yeah, right.

I reached some kind of critical mass a couple days ago where I was so itchy to knit I was actually twitching. I hunted up my Ravelry invitation, logged in and started searching for what other knitters have done with two skeins of Knit Picks Shimmer yarn. I was a bit ginger about it, knowing the time suck factor could get me at any moment. I looked around a bit, saw some lovely photos and got the heck out of Dodge.

I went back the next day. You knew I would. And this time I was a little more organized and discovered exactly what I was looking for. And you’ll never guess what I’m going to knit with my prize winnings.

A Clapotis!

Ha! Years ago I looked at the pattern, saw the cost of the yarn and sprinted away. That was back when I didn’t know quality yarn from a mud pie. I thought I might very well be an outsider in the knitting world, one of the few knitters who would never knit or own a Clapotis. I consoled myself with how some knitters abandoned theirs midway when they got bored.

Huh! Back before August when I lost my knitting bearings, I joined Elizabeth’s Year where we would knit a new project each month from Elizabeth Zimmermann’s Knitter’s Almanac. In July, it was the Pi shawl. I knit TWO of them!

So I think I can knit a Clapotis. We’ll see, I guess. And this is more than enough blabbering. Can you tell I missed posting about knitting? Yikes!

Or is that just me?

As I tried to go back to sleep, I got to wondering HOW I was making the V-neck increases. I wanted a knit stitch [...]]]>
Did you ever wake up too early in the morning and have to get up because you suddenly realized there might be a mistake in your knitting?

Or is that just me?

As I tried to go back to sleep, I got to wondering HOW I was making the V-neck increases. I wanted a knit stitch to stay along the edge of the knitting for a smoother edge instead of stair steps from the increases. I figured it might be easier to pick up stitches for the neck ribbing that way. But that led to some confusion again. I feared I’d started building from that edge instead of building out from the sweater’s pattern.

I was right. I was doing it wrong. I only had to ladder down a few rows of knit stitch and and a few rows of purl stitch on each side. Being so close to the edge was a little tricky. I didn’t want to make a mistake and mess up the selvedge edge. I’ve had to rip back knitting more than once after fouling up edge stitches. I find them too confusing to reconstruct.

So I’m on track again, building out the pattern from the sweater side, not the selvedge side. Phew!

Don’t worry. I won’t show daily progress shots of this sweater. It’s done on smaller needles with thinner yarn than I’ve ever used when making a sweater, so this project is liable to take me awhile. I notice already how long it takes to knit a row and I haven’t even reached the shoulder ends yet.

I’ve got pictures of other things to liven things up a bit. I’ll rest easier tonight—until or unless I think up something else to worry about. Ha!

UPDATE: I was doing it right the first time. Sheesh!

When I went to increase again, I did it my second-thought-way and it’s just wrong! Really I should just forget the knit stitch along the edge. It’s only confusing me all to pieces. I’ve got about four inches knitted, though. From time to time I’m tempted to rip the whole thing out and start over. Then I wonder if I can just fix the edges. Without touching the edge stitch.

What? You mean the edge stitch that is the very problem? Yeah, that one. Sigh. One more goof and I’m likely ripping back and starting over. I can take a hint.

It’s a new yarn for me, my first alpaca project. The label says “Mystic Alpaca, quality texture from nature” and I [...]]]>
Here’s my new project, up and running after three false starts. It may not look like much now, but it’s tickling me no end now that I’ve ironed out a bunch of glitches.

It’s a new yarn for me, my first alpaca project. The label says “Mystic Alpaca, quality texture from nature” and I got it on eBay from peru4less. I hoped it would be soft. It is. I didn’t know what weight it would be. Seems to be sport yarn. I didn’t know what needle size to use and decided to try whatever the label said. It said nothing!

So I played around with it and discovered after some swatching that I like what I get on US size 2 needles. And I envisioned a nice lightweight long-sleeved body skimming v-neck sweater that would keep me warm like alpaca promises to do and yet be lightweight. I recently discovered how warm and wonderful a thin silk sweater makes me feel, so I’m into exploring natural fibers.

It took me quite a while to settle on a stitch design, then hit me all at once one day while I washed dishes. It made me smile to realize I could use the bamboo rib pattern from The Encyclopedia of Knitting. I knitted socks for my daughter a couple years back and we both liked the bamboo rib socks the best.

I figured I’d invent my own pattern, but got hung up over how to knit from the top down with a V-neck. I googled it and discovered Wendy had just what I want in her Essential Stripes pattern. I knew that. I read her blog all the time. Just slow about connecting dots because she’s talking stripes and I’m talking a solid with textured knitting. Duh. Still works a treat.

So why three starts? Well, first I jumped in with both feet and started knitting without too much attention to how the ribs would work out. I bought two circular needles in size 2 when I discovered I had none, then I started knitting with one despite it being much like a corkscrew from living in a package forever. I decided to ignore that.

Wendy assumed I would be knitting plain stockinette and said to increase by knitting in the front and back of a stitch. Fine. Except it was very confusing to do that while trying to maintain my bamboo rib pattern. Then about two rows too late I realized I was supposed to do the cross rib part of the pattern. That was mistake number two. Too much for me. I started over on the second needle.

This time I looked up the pattern to make sure I was right about the pattern being a multiple of 8 plus 2. It wasn’t. It’s a multiple of 8 plus 6. So I cast on the number of stitches I needed for the repeat, once again fighting the corkscrewed coil. About two inches of knitting later, I realized the pattern has to match up when I start knitting in the round below the armholes, not at the neckline. And by then I was really tired of the confusion every time I needed to increase a stitch. While taking a bath (does water have magical properties?) I realized if I knit one stitch before and after every marker where I’m to increase, and Make one stitch out the side of that resulting rib, life would be so good. And I tried it, and I loved it.

So that led to start number three. I smartened up and put a small amount of water on to boil, dipped my stiff new circular needles in it for half a moment and almost squealed. It’s like magic how the coil relaxed. So here’s my knitting on a relaxed needle, with the suggested number of stitches, minus one in the center back for the sake of my ribbing needing 32 instead of 33, and using the Make 1 increase In Pattern as needed. It’s so much fun now! I just want to knit all day.

I love it when a project catches fire and makes me want to knit, knit, knit. Don’t you?