bad knitter, no biscuit

Gosh, yes, she says offhandedly, tracing embarrassed circles with her toe, I have this knit blog thing, don't I? Oh dear.

The lack of knit-blogging has had a lot to do with the lack of actual knitting, since I finished the banana-fibre scarf in an excess of zeal (and Farscape), and then rested panting on my laurels for a while. Then the really bad 'flu hit and the glandular fever hit back. Then work got seriously crazy for about three weeks, leaving me too denuded of energy to actually lift the needles. Then the edited book came back from the proof-reader and I spent three weeks quarrelling with Oxford commas and the "which/that" controversy. Then there was an unfortunate, doomed and temporary love affair with mohair (not the kid mohair) which ended up in emotional tangles and broken hearts all round, or at the very least broken threads, and about which I really don't want to talk. Then I went away for a long weekend to a game farm, and started knitting again:



Things I Have Learned:

1. Mohair is a bugger.
   
2. Cotton, on the other hand, is possibly my one true love, at least for the moment. (That's a cotton washcloth, this one).
   
3. Game farms are exceptionally beautiful spots to knit in, even in the freezing cold dawn on the balcony.
   
4. Banana fibre scarves are adequately warm for game viewing, and rather snazzy.
   
5. Now that I'm back into knitting mode, the latest infection is a perfectly unholy and random desire to knit lace. Probably with the kid mohair, which I confidently expect won't snarl like the other fuzzy stuff I've been wrestling.
   
6. Knitting is highly contagious. Inadequate quarantine has resulted in my mother, possibly frustrated beyond belief by witnessing my fumbling efforts, rediscovering knitting after a fifteen-year hiatus. (Robynn, your fell influence is spreading. You may now gloat ;>).Apart from a mad outbreak of woolly hats for the game farm trip (mine's purple), she has spent the last few days knitting clothes for the felt teddy bear she made for my niece. I am utterly charmed.
   
   
   
   Da Niece (now aged nearly 3, and moving into the Experimental Linguistics phase) informs us that his name is Bottop Bear.

knitting pome

Knitting poetry by Moira Linehan. Eve cable-stitches the serpent's back. You seasoned knitters are quite probably familiar with this, but it rather charmed me.

The banana fibre scarf is twice as long as my arm, and has only not made any progress in the last week because I've run out of X-Files. New seasons arrive in July, until which time I shall have to retreat into Buffy. I discovered, with some annoyance, that the two balls of wool are slightly different colours, so I've alternated them in huge chunks, probably not an optimal solution but I didn't want to rip it back and be more artistic as this yarn breaks very easily. The second colour is also slightly differently textured, not as smooth. Is this normal with hand-dyed stuff?

I will photograph it all soon. I will! I will!

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!

cobwebs

Oops. Over a month since I blogged here - got an attack of Life, or at least enough worry about it to stop the fine, careless yarn rapture. I hasten to add, though, that I have been knitting, and that it's been the kind of boring work on the same project where, if I had updated, all I'd have said would have been "Finished Farscape Season 2, Swiss Cheese scarf update: now 72cm." Please assume such posts to have been made, leading to the point where I can say that the scarf is now 92cm long by my cute sheep measure, I'm on my third ball of wool, and the stitches are a lot more even than they were when I started. Soon I shall progress from taking out the cotton washcloth yarn Robynn made me buy, looking at the pattern and having a small, feeble Purl moment, to actually trying to knit it.

In other news, I have a new job from January, one with an actual salary, so will be able to buy more yarn. (You can see how the finer essentials of this knitting lark have vouchsafed themselves to me). In the last two weeks I have fondled yarn in three separate shops, although remaining strong in not actually acquiring any owing to the uncertainty about money.

However, I did succumb and buy myself a knitting bag. It's beautiful, and has probably accounted for about 20cm of scarf in sheer inspiration.



Note the nonchalant way the scarf is draped out of the bag. Practically Rubenesque.

Oh, and happy seasonal wossnames to all, hope you got lots of good knitting done.