F.O.

I did it! It's a dishcloth! My first ever finished project!



The camera is still doing horrible things to the colour, and viewers are asked not to look too closely at the snarly bits where the yarn separated out. Cotton seems to be evil that way. Also, what do I do with the dangling ends of yarn? My cats want to play with them.

I finished this while watching "Blink" again, still one of my favourite Doctor Who episodes ever, even though it scares me off the couch and occasionally out of the room even on the third watching. I have, however, discovered that looking steadfastly at one's knitting during creepy bits is a very good for defusing the wimpy terror, as well as being randomly good for my knitting.

Now I want to try dishcloths in different colour combinations. This is mostly to prevent me from having to go back to the swiss cheese scarf, which has suddenly reverted to its space/time warping ways, and is refusing to add up to the correct number of stitches. As usual, I blame quantum.

proof positive!

Just for Robynn, the proof that I actually have managed to create something not entirely unlike the ballband dishcloth (while incidentally watching a whole lot of Season 3 of Doctor Who):



The colours actually look horrible, I'm not sure if it's my photography or the monitor: they should be a deep burgundy and a sort of grey with a faintly green tinge. In close-up (carefully chosen so you don't see the bits with too many errors):



The main problems I'm having with this pattern are the edge bits where I'm bringing in the different yarn colour (gets messy), and the occasional tendency to twist one of the fancy slipped bits. The main problem I'm having with the yarn is that its threads separate very easily, I've mislaid single strands all over the show and snarled them into the wrong places rather wholesalely. The next version will be better, she says with grim determination. But I'm generally very happy with the sort of brick-worky effect, and the rather pleasing texture contrasts.

I have also hopelessly fallen for the Panopticon's latest T-shirt design, which has a dragon-guarded yarn stash.

.

Want one!

bobblybobblybobbly

A very strange thing has happened to my growing yarn fixation. In each of the three yarn shops I've gone into lately, I've found myself ending my judicious, dignified wander accidentally plastered up against the novelty yarn section, salivating. If it has bobbles, sparkles, feathers, bits, beads or gosh-darned bojangles, some eternally eight-year-old part of my subconscious seems to desire it passionately.

This is very weird. When indulging my first love, which is fabric, I'm a complete fibre snob: I like cotton, linen, silk, viscose. My habitual stance is to wander around fabric stores letting loose my fine homing instinct for colour (black, jewel tones); then, gaze fixed in the middle distance, I fixatedly fondle the fabric. If there's too high a concentration of synthetic, my mien assumes the disdainful expression of a snobby duchess who's just detected something a little off about the fish, and I drop the offending cloth contemptuously, in extreme cases wiping my hand on my skirt. (You can imagine that fabric store assistants love this). Anything above about 15% synthetic gets me. I hate it. I always feel as though I can't breathe when I'm wearing it.

The thing about novelty yarn, of course, is that most of it represents the 1001 Really Interesting Things We Can Do With Unnatural Bits Of Thing. It's uniformly acryllicoid. The spangles and dangles and what have you are clearly Best Quality Plastic, and make no bones about it. And, weirdly enough, this doesn't seem to matter - while absolutely open to the more elevated seductions of mohair, wool and banana fibre, I am still possessed of an unholy desire to knit the unholy plastic novelty stuff. This also, of course, takes absolutely no notice of the fact that my knitting skills are currently barely up to perfectly straight and straightforward yarn; I shudder to think of the interesting space-time tangles I could generate with boucle. Also, it's not as if I'd ever wear any of it, or not at least without someone giving me a great deal of bribe money and a personality transplant.

I have thus far, with consummate self-control, prevented myself from actually acquiring any of this glittery froufrou, but I have a horrible feeling it's only a matter of time until I'm tying myself to the sofa, now with added sequins. When the hour is nigh, I shall have to do my damndest to channel the urge into actual mohair boucle in that beautiful greeny blue. In fact, I might have to go and acquire it tomorrow. Dammit.

In other news: more space-time warpage! Robynn, is this dratted dishcloth actually supposed to be giving me a stockinette stitch border and garter stitch bands of colour, or am I doing something weird to the row count while perving Doctor Who?

slippage, rapturous, for the use of

It being a new year and all, I made the Symbolic Gesture of breaking out the two colours of cotton yarn and the beautiful rosewood 4.5mm needles, and having a go at the ballband dishcloth Robynn suggested. This was a bit weird, since the smaller needles and the texture of the cotton are a serious paradigm shift after quantities of aran-weight swiss cheese, but I didn't allow this to faze me. After all, I thought, there's still purling to come...

I have discovered that my space-time problem with purl is not, in fact, purl. I knitted a perfect row of purl first-off, no wibbles or continuum warps. It looks kinda cool. I am forced to conclude that the problem I have is in trying to alternate plain and purl. I suspect they're like matter and anti-matter, and therefore shouldn't exist in the same universe. Row. Whatever.

I spent most of the morning stuck at Row 3 in the pattern, which casually tells me "Join B". I had five different websites up with instructions for joining wool of a different colour. None of them made any sense (although this may be partially attributable to the fact that I had to wake up at 5.30 this morning to take my mother to the airport and consequently have no brain; also, the Evil Landlord's computer keeps randomly rebooting, kicking me off the wireless each time, usually in the middle of a complicated knitting video). I couldn't work out what I was actually trying to do here - tuck a new colour miraculously in so that I knit with alternately one and then the other, carrying the unused colour along with me concealed in a small alternate dimension? or starting a new row with a new colour and snipping the old one? or simply leaving the old one by the wayside like a discarded boot until I get bored with hopping? yours, confused. Also, the instruction "slip" sounded fraught with peril. Historically speaking, I break limbs when I slip, or at the very least dislocate something. Possibly the space-time continuum. Again.

Eventually, tired of squinting at the screen and muttering to myself, I damned well joined the second colour and simply obeyed the pattern, trusting to luck and the tangled gods of knitting and idiots. It helped that I finally found a site that explained slipping (it's so simple most don't bother). I am now six rows into the pattern, with no more incident than accidentally knitting the trailing end of the plaster on my left forefinger into a stitch, and having to be vigilant for the occasional picked-up stitch with all this yarn forwarding and backing. I am overcome with awe at the sneaky colour-play resulting from leaving all these slipped stiches hanging in this callous way and anchoring them with the forward/back bit. Knitting. It's cool.