holes in the fabric of space-time

I have to report progress!



The First Seven Rows of My First Scarf, posed artistically on a handy third-year Shrek essay. Those look almost like rows, yes? and the big chunky gaps are the correct and relevant big chunky gaps for the Swiss Cheese Scarf. There are probably the buried corpses of ninja errors in there, but that's because my ninja-burial skills are still a bit rudimentary. At least, however, I'm zotting the little sods before they multiply, even if there is the odd limb sticking up out of the grave. And this refers completely and only to dropped stitches: I still have five stitches too many at the end of the last row, and no idea where they came from or how to make them wriggle back into the void. Darned space-time.

Knitting is still a highly private occupation because I suspect I look bloody ridiculous while knitting, particularly while binding off: the hunched posture, the deep frown of concentration, the pitifully unco-ordinated movements, the swearing... Binding off requires knitting in reverse. This is possibly unnecessarily cruel to a ham-fisted beginner, but I have to say I picked it up faster than I did purling. Purling is still my nemesis. And I absolutely cannot work out how to cast on in this pattern. Long-tailed cast-on, which I have down, clearly doesn't work when you're halfway through a row. Two-needle cast-on is giving me unaesthetic snarls. I shall persevere a bit, and then go and find an actual knitter who can lead me gently by the hand through the thickets of stitches.

redo from start

I've finally worked out what my problem is with this knitting binge. It's not that I don't know how to knit properly, it's that I don't know how to knit improperly. More accurately, before you're all yelling "Knit Naked!" slogans, I don't actually know how to deal with errors.

Basically, I don't get errors, I get highly-trained Ninja Errors. They sneak into my work, cat-footed and blending into the shadows, so that it's all fine when I check it, but three stitches later there are errors going back four rows and raising whole families of little baby errors with nauseating enthusiasm. (The Sex Life Of The Common Garter Stitch. Scary stuff).

I don't know what I do to get these errors. (Well, I've ironed out the extra-stitch ones, thanks to various kind suggestions from Teh Internets. Teh Internets taught me to knit. Fact.) But crossed stitches? weird bobbly bumps at the base of the stitch? sudden ginormous loops that span three stitches which I could have sworn were perfectly normal on the previous row? No clue. Ninja errors. Their ways are mysterious.

Not knowing how I got them, it's actually very difficult for me to do anything about them. The first few (dozen) times an error happened (note the careful passive tense), I ripped the whole thing back and started from scratch. (This is why I'm now very good at casting on). The last few times I've ripped carefully back to the error, picked up all the stitches, on at least one occasion taken them off the needle and carefully picked them up again right way round, and then sat staring blankly at the mistake, occasionally poking it feebly with a needle to see if it miraculously jumped into position. Then I ripped the whole thing back and started from scratch.

Any time now it's going to occur to me to take this poor multi-knitted tangle of yarn to someone who actually knows what they're doing, and humbly beg for enlightement. And, possibly, gin.