A week and a half left to go, and I am just beginning to allow myself to contemplate the idea that all the last-minute Xmas knitting might just maybe possibly get done in time for the last mail. Unless I sit here tempting Providence again by even permitting the germ of that thought to enter my head.
As you can see, I am well on my way to not just mastering, but thoroughly trouncing the Magic Loop technique for small diameter knitting; and I am still loving the James C.Brett Aria yarn.
No, I am not listening. I cannot see you gesticulating. I refuse to hear your sneaky whispers of sock passion. I will confess instead that to make the above mitts, I need a pair of 3.75mm circular needles; I found the empty packet, so I knew they must be lying around somewhere. The somewhere turned out to be in another long-term WIP, Lily's Slice of Pi Shawl, which I started on the 6th March this year (oh the shame) and has been hibernating for a while. So I signed the 'fession and admit to us both that this will not get made, in this yarn anyway, and pulled the needles out to use for the mitts.
I can almost see a New Year's resolution taking shape as I type .... Pop on over to Tami's Amis to see how everyone else is faring ...
The soundtrack for today's post is martial and triumphant, and in no way a reflection of my personality:
Since the James C.Brett ball of Moonlight Sonata yarn is 500m long, not only has it enabled me to knit The Hat, but also a Neckwarmer, and 3 fingerless gloves for Mini Diva, who was enamored with the idea of a matching winter set of accessories. No, she does not have 3 arms or hands. I made 3 because this was the first one:
It is not a sad and pathetic unloved mistake, it is a character-building Learning Experience we fondly call The Misbegotten Glove. Using the pattern 'Raging Fingerless Gloves' because the gloves are knitted flat and then seamed (anything to avoid the dread DPNs of Doom or the Magic Loop of Lunacy), I found it to be somewhat slipshod; I am no Virgo perfectionist, but even I raise an eyebrow at instructions that say ''Don't worry if there's a little 'hole' where the thumb attaches to the body - it will blend in nicely with the lace pattern''. Umm ..... No, it doesn't.
And if you don't purl through the back of the loop on the thumb gusset yarn over increases ie. ptbl each YO, then you get a whole bunch of other extra holes that do not look like purposeful lace holes. You don't have to ask me how I know, as the Misbegotten Glove above is the proof. Things I also learned from Misbegotten Glove was that it needs a really stretchy cast on and a really stretchy bind off, unless you want said gloves to also act as a tourniquet resulting in the loss of a limb from blood starvation. The bind off was a cinch, as I'm now an old hand at the Yarn Over Bind Off. But one of the new things I learned how to do (needs must when the Devil rides) was a Long Tail Cast On:
I watched Steph do this when she started The Hat for me; in fact, I watched her do it several times including in Super Slow Mo. It made me feel like Mr.T, and looked like a Cat's Cradle game gone terribly, tragically wrong and the Cat was strangled. But me and You Tube persisted, and in the end I managed it, but not without lots of gleeful crowing. Since I had carefully picked the pattern because it is seamed, I neglected to anticipate that a thumb gusset might not be part of that whole Flat Earth ideology as it's pretty much a 3 dimensional item:
I Magic Looped the thumb gusset. I know ! I can hardly believe it myself ! Hence the photographic proof. That means I have slain two whole demons in as many days: go me ! Brimming with irritated confidence, I embarked on the two Pretty Sisters of the Misbegotten Glove; with which Mini Diva was so chuffed, they didn't even get washed and blocked before wearing them to school. Hop on over to Tami's Amis for more tales of conquest ...
You need to click on this and play it as you read - all will become clear as you proceed, I promise:
When Nanny was visiting with us, she bought Mini Diva some yarn, for me to make something out of. Generally speaking, other project deadlines permitting, this is absolutely not a problem: I do like to knit something for someone when it will be wanted and loved and petted and squeezed and called George. Oops, sorry, got carried away there. Mini Diva wanted a hat and scarf, seeing as how the weather has turned cold and wintery; so we spent some time cruising the hat patterns at Ravelry - and because nothing is too good for Mini Diva - we even checked out the paid-for patterns. She decided on Raindrops on Roses, which I agreed was a very lovely pattern and would give her the slouchiness she desired. All straightforward so far, right ? Right. I persevered through the online and RL hunt for the right size of double-pointed needles: the pattern specifies 4.25mm, and after an exhaustive search, my Twitter Knitter friends told me they did not exist, and that it was a typo in the pattern. Then I had to wait til the shops were open again so I could buy some 4mm ones. OK, a hitch, but not insurmountable. Here's the thing: these are double-pointed needles (or DPNs):
They come in packs containing 4 or 5 needles. It's a method of knitting teenytiny circular shapes, you know, as in the crown of a hat maybe. Or perhaps socks - but we will not peer too closely into the scarey darkness under the stairs on that one, we don't like the skittery noises we can hear. Anyway. It might look a bit like this diagram:
It only might look a bit like that diagram if you are one of these:
My temperament is somewhat akin to the Kraken's, true, but I seriously lack it's most useful attributes, ie.
the Tentacles
And also these:
the Suckers
After almost weeping with rage and despair at the fleet-fingered DPN doyennes that seem to so carelessly litter You Tube, I decided that Magic Loop would be the technique for me.
In this, you take a circular needle ie. 2 knitting needles joined/connected to each other with a nice bendy plastic cable, and you twizzle it about like a cowboy with a lariat hog-tying a calf so that you can knit small circular things, like, I don't know, maybe the crown of a hat ? It looks like this:
No, I WISH that's what mine looked like. It didn't even look like this, which is what I was ready to use by this time:
So I totally folded and asked my friend Stephcuddles to teach me how to use either of these techniques. We met for posh coffee (although not at Starbucks, I am boycotting them) at the weekend. She spent loads of time and effort and patience, but this old dog could NOT learn this dagnammit new trick !
Steph knitted the first 10 rounds to get me going.. I know when to walk away. And go off to look cool and regain my self-esteem by being interviewed on stuff I actually know something about - at Andy's blog.
