This represents in potentia a simple broken-rib scarf, 41 stitches, a 3/1 plain/purl pattern, size 5.5 needles, and an Aran 50% wool in a pleasingly sludgy shade of green. I have now ripped it back to nothing six times. This object exists in a sort of stuttering relationship between notional and actual form, as I bring it continually forth only to send it back. Bearing in mind Pratchett's Pork Futures Warehouse, I am unsurprised that the weather has turned cold and rainy.
I cannot adequately express how bad I am at this. Long-tail cast-on I have mastered. I can do it, if I'm careful not to either twist the wool inappropriately, or to accidentally hoik all the new-born stitches callously off the end of the needle by an incautious movement. I end up with a tight, even row of something that looks suspiciously like stitches. Anyone who can give me pointers to a project involving indeterminate quantities of long-tail cast-on and no actual knitting will have my gratitude. Beyond cast-on it all goes a bit pear-shaped.
The last time I tried to actualise this scarf, I watched my first three rows like a hawk, and triumphantly had 41 stitches at the end of each row. Then I relaxed slightly, and by the end of the fourth row had mysteriously acquired four extra stitches from some alternate dimension where they lurk, waiting. I also had crossed stitches, interesting snarls, and a tendency to look over my shoulder at intervals in expectation of annoyed physicists wanting to talk about the nature of space-time.
Bizarrely enough I'm actually still enjoying this. I realise that knitting represents a constellation of skills and qualities I simply do not possess - patience, attention to detail, ability to maintain concentration over simple, tricky, repetitive movements. I am buggered if I'll be defeated by a snarl of yarn. I will be a better, higher, nobler person if I can master this, and master it I will. In my universe, sheer bloody-mindedness is a virtue.
This being said, I need to present to you my knitting in its natural habitat:
The pedestal is a pile of unmarked Honours dissertations whose existence I have been wantonly ignoring all week. The deadline for the marks was yesterday. My doom is upon me. If I get to knit this weekend, it will only be in small snatches in between writing enthused or withering comments in green pen, and suppressing my cursing. Thus, no pictures of rows. Will put up pictures of what we will humorously refer to as "rows" when I've had a chance to actually knit some. Which I will. Soon. Properly. Grrrrr.
3 comments:
Okay then.
I fear it still does involve knitting, in between the cast on (and off) bits, but only garter stitch, so if you're having trouble maintaining an even stitch count, it'll be less of a problem here. (An extra stitch or two won't muck up your stitch pattern, and is as I have mentioned, in the very finest tradition of First Knits.)
Oooh, that's lovely. Weird, but lovely.
It says laceweight yarn, would you suggest I get some, or go with the Aran?
If Aran, how do I finangle the pattern so it isn't humungeously wide?
Won't binding off allow even more random stitches to wriggle off into their alternate dimension, and thus make my life even more difficult in the stitch-gaining department? Worried.
Extra stitches usually appear when you turn the knititng round, with the yarn accidentally wrapping round the needle leaving a loop masquerading as a stitch. Increasing accidentally is a common prob!
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