banananananananana!

There's movement on the knitting front! I have overcome vast inertia (and a sudden retreat into manic reading instead of knitting) in order to (a) reduce to neat balls of wool the swiss cheese scarf by determined frogging while watching X-Files, and (b) play with banana fibre.

The banana fibre was hauled out as a direct result of Cape Town's current tendency to random load shedding, i.e. the lights go out without warning, usually right in the middle of an X-Files episode. This happened at about 8pm on Monday night, leaving me sitting in the dark kicking myself for not having dragged out the banana fibre and printed out a pattern a lot earlier, since knitting is a perfect activity for low light. I tried to read by candlelight for a bit, but the incipient headache made me give up and go to bed ridiculously early, with a pillow over my head to cut out the INCREDIBLE NOISE from the hospital generators across the road.

In a spirit of preparedness, and mental fist-shaking at the Electrical Powers That Be, I found the wool and pattern yesterday. I ended up going with the nicely simple broken rib Robynn suggested for My First Project, and it really seems to suit this yarn, which is heavy and slubby and uneven, and makes for a gorgeous texturedness. (The plain/purl alteration does, however, still cause me to occasionally bring forth extra ninja stitches from their pocket dimension when I'm not looking). The needles are huge, size 8, and wooden, since apparently my personal and wayward knitting gods have decreed that metal needles are for me an illegitimate rite which cause me to fall into sin, mostly cursing and dropped stitches. It's also a very thin scarf - I only cast on 24 stitches, and the width seems to be perfect. The problem with the Swiss Cheese was not the pattern, which I love, but the wool (half acrylic, can't stand acrylic) and the width, way too wide. I think I'll try for a skinny swiss cheese in the rather nice grey laceweight mohair friends madly acquired for me at a neighbourhood market.

I was, of course, poised in front of X-Files at 7.50pm last night with my knitting in hand and a torch next to the sofa, and, of course, there wasn't a power cut. On the other hand, I've achieved a good 10cm worth of scarf. Also, Mulder is stuck in Tunguska about to be infected horribly with Black Oil.

More importantly, tonight I have dinner with my sister, who's been away for a couple of weeks, and finally score the kid mohair courtesy of my papa. Photos will undoubtedly follow. *gloats*

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.

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.

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.

for want of a better word

This is what my knitting looks like:



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.

the divvil made me do it

Or more accurately, Robynn. It's all her fault, (a) that I started knitting at all, she encouraged me, the pusher, and (b) that she pointed out what a good blog name "Purl-handled revolver" would make, and it turned out to be a google-whack. The daft, arcane and tangled gods of knitting are clearly making their will known.

This whole knitting binge started with a post on my other blog, thusly:

As a result of a random concatenation of circumstances, I just spent an hour reading through The Panopticon. It's a knitting blog. It's very well written and very funny, and features Dolores the cabaret sheep. It has also, in a response straight out of left field, and a horror hitherto unknown in my personal life, left me with a serious desire to overthrow the prejudice of a lifetime and take up actual knitting.

I feel an intervention is required here. I would be grateful if the relevant people would perform the following tasks:
(a) Non-knitting friends, please forcibly restrain me from this madness, pointing out its roots in psychological insecurity, life-avoidance and the frivolous desire for pretty clothes, and the unavoidable fact that, whatever I might fondly imagine, it's likely to teach me exactly the opposite of patience.
(b) Knitting friends, of whom I seem to have incredible stonkloads, please advise me as to the most user-friendly, low-grade projects likely to ease me gently into the long, hard process of converting some of my many thumbs to actual fingers while entangling myself in miles of yarn. The ultimate production of genuine articles of clothing would be a bonus.

God, I must be mad.

Since I received nothing but enthusiastic support, I am currently four rows into my first scarf for the fifth time. I should point out that I am thirty-mumble years old, and last knitted sometime in the dawn of time, when I was still in junior school. I hated it and was very bad at it. Even now, I regard knitting with a sort of paranoid fear: not only am I terrible at it, but I'm firmly convinced I'll actually unknit the fabric of space and time with some of these stitches.

This blog is for chronicling, in words and pictures, the slow and laboured progress of my acquisition of knitting skills. This alternative venue will prevent me being growled at or lynched by the readers of my other blog who think knitting is weird.

I should state now, for the record, up front, that even if I achieve respectable levels of skill at this game, I won't knit socks.