Dogs, knitting and short row toes

I like to knit a few hours every evening; but, Opal is preventing this. She has found that she can really get my attention FAST if she grabs either my working yarn or the ball of yarn out of the basket. I have become crafty at hiding the yarn. My armpit is one of the more secure locations, but it is hard to knit smoothly because I have to unclamp my arm every time I need more working yarn and you can’t have any yarn dangling or she clamps on and pulls. Hard.

We still love her. Maybe this is why:

Most of the day, this is how my lap looks while I work.

In the evening wild dog comes out. No camera is fast enough to catch that action. It’s a whirlwind of milk teeth, claws and faster-than-light movement. Even so, I managed to start, frog, start, frog, start, frog . . . I better just quit here because truth be known, I lost track of how many times I started and frogged the provisional cast on, short-row toe in the Anne Hanson Teosinte socks. This toe has a double wrap that I can’t seem to pick up smoothly. I end up with a bump and it looks bad to boot.

Here’s what I’m doing. Tell me if you see the error of my ways. PLEASE!!

On the knit side, I’m picking up the two wraps from the bottom, then sliding the needle into the stich the wraps are wrapping in a normal knit fashion. I knit the stitch, then pass both wraps over the knitted stitch. Wrap and turn, creating the double wrap on the next stitch and purl back.

When I get to that double-wrapped stitch on the purl side, I have been performing some gymnastics, which makes me think I’m doing it ALL wrong.

According to something I saw somewhere online, you are supposed to pick up the purl wraps from the public side of the work (or back side of the needles as you are working). Pick up both wraps from the bottom up and then purl the stitch as normal, then pass the wrapped stitches over. Wrap and turn creating the next double-wrap stitch on that side.

I thought about taking a photo of what my end result is, but I was too disgusted. Bumps, weirdly angled stitches, nasty-looking stuff.

I finally gave up and went on with the foot. I got through one pattern repeat and decided they looked a little big, tried them on and these socks swim on my feet! So I frogged again, and redid my guage swatch. Weird. I’m spot on with the guage. I know Hanson is an excellent designer. I’m sure the fault is mine. But what?

So, my thought was to put this pattern aside until I have a stiffer, more tightly twisted yarn. I was using The Knittery cashmere/merino sock yarn and it’s so soft that:
1. I’m wearing it out.
2. It’s harder to manipulate. It splits fairly easily. Especially now that it’s been knit and reknit so many times.

Meanwhile, this lovely yarn is all ready to go: 8 stitches to the inch on a 2.5 needle. Suggestions?

We’ve reached a truce

We’ve settled, for the time being, on the name “Opal” for the newest family member.

She’s a ball of fire! In the background of the picture above, you can see one of her favorite toys. I call it “Christmas Man.” Note the red nose on Christmas Man right above her head. This is happy thing. It means that instead of my fingers, she bites the nose part of the time.

We’ve reached a knitting truce. She lets me knit occasionally. In exchange, I tickle her belly, pull toys around the house on strings, hold her in my lap, feed her, clean up poop, take her outside, show her where to look for mice, teach her how to be nice to Jakob, let her chew on my zipper pulls, give her bits of mail to play with and otherwise serve as playmate, mom and teacher.

Even so, I did manage to finish one of the scratchy socks except for the kitchener at the toe. The other sock just needs another inch or so before I start toe decreases. If all goes well, I’ll finish them tonight and move onto The Knittery cashmere/merino. YUMM.

New aquisitions include some wonderful yarn from Miss Babs.

Don’t you just love the Rose Garden skein?

Also stunning are the Pigeon Roof Studios:

Above: Dovecoat. Below: Fig.

Ah, the luxury of more yarn than time. It is so lovely to crawl up into the loft where I keep the yarn and be away from Miss Opal and her little milk teeth for a moment or two. I pet the yarn, look at all the colors, dream about what I will knit and then descend back into the Wild Kingdom.

Spend a few minutes with Opal in the evening and it won’t be a mystery why the resident non-knitter and I keep humming the song “Wild Thing.”

What’s keeping me from knitting

Yep, we got a new member of the household. If you have read prior posts, you might remember that we lost our 14-year old dachshund last July. There was much debate about a new dog. We decided no, didn’t want one. But then, I saw this ad in the classifieds for Rat Terriers. Both the resident non-knitter and I thought that Rat Terriers were very hairy little dogs. That appealed to us. So we went to “just look.”

We got there, and clearly this is not a hairy dog. We thought the guy was trying to pull one over on us. So, home we came, and I looked on the web just to verify that we were right and he didn’t have a clue on the kind of dogs he was raising (arrogant or what!!).

Instead we discovered that he did know what he had. We also discovered that Rat Terriers, according to many, are very nice dogs with few if any major health concerns. Easy to train. Hardy. Sociable. Entertaining.

So scratch Pug off the list, scratch Boston Terrier off the list, and come home with an 8-week old Rat Terrier puppy.

Do we regret the decision? Well, she’s been with us three days and she slept soundly all night last night. She wets outside when I take her out. She will mess on the carpet; but, seems to prefer the puppy pad or outside if given a choice. She knows what “no” means and respects it when I tell her “no.” Do I sound like the proud mamma?

All that’s left is a name. Contenders: Aster (a flower that is a symbol of love), Opal (she has the coloration of common opal, a gemstone with healing properties), Elsie (don’t her markings make her look like a little cow?), and . . . well I like Lexi, Alex, and a few others too. Got some suggestions for us?

P.S. By the way, I did finish the hat. I wear it every morning and evening when I feed horses. One of these days I’ll get the resident non-knitter to take a picture of it for me.

Things my hat taught me

The hat, my hat, is still not done. Should be. Isn’t. But, it is a great teaching tool. I’ve learned things like, “Center pull yarn will not pull when the cat has her paw stuck inside the center of the ball. No matter what she tells you, she is not helping.”

That’s not all I learned. Here are the top five things my hat taught me.

1. If if looks stupid it probably is stupid.
If you read the last post, you saw that I was debating between four decrease sections and eight. I decided to try eight. I got everything all set up with eight stitch markers. All on a 16-inch circular needle. Even the resident non-knitter pointed out that it looked dumb. I thought about taking a photo, but I was too embarassed for anyone with any knitting knowledge to see it. (This should have been a big clue!) I actually knitted eight rows before I realized that even though my hat has more stitches around than the other one, it really isn’t “bigger.” So, adding in four more decrease sections over the same physical diameter just didn’t make sense. Tink back, start again.

2. Avoid row counters. They take up too much time and you don’t trust them anyway.
It’s true. I never actually trust the row counter, so I always end up finding another way to figure out which row I’m on to double check the row counter. This seems redundant and time consuming. Why not just read your knitting to figure out where you are? That’s what I end up doing anyway.

3. Read the pattern before you start knitting.
Not eight rows into the project. OK. I’m not really using a pattern. However, I did want the decreases to look the same way they did on the resident non-knitters hat. I like those. It might have been a good idea to check the pattern I used for his hat to see that the SSK comes after the K1, not before.

4. If it doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t right.
AKA
If it doubt, rip it out.
This is a corallary to Law 1. I sat there and looked at those decreases for eight rows. 192 stitches per row. That took a while on US1 needles. Just as long as it took the first time I knitted those eight rows. Every row looked wrong. And for some reason, I kept thinking it would improve. How could it improve? When I finally got up to look at the pattern, ala Law 3, I realized I what I was doing wrong. Rip out eight rows again. Start all over. Again.

5. Tink hard and you will learn. Eventually.
For the first time, I understand how easy it is to pick up a dropped purl or dropped knit stitch without resorting to a crochet hook. Simple. I learned that it’s not worth the time, sometimes, to try to work back down over a few stitches to correct a mistake–especially when you have the mistake repeating four times around. Just pull that baby off the needles and reknit. Of course, I also learned laws one through four. And I think I might be a little more proficient at knitting now.

So, for try three, I tossed aside the stupid row counter–it’s a hat for pete’s sake with K2P2 ribbing and one decrease per section. How hard is that to figure out which row you are on? I went with four decrease sections. I am doing the decrease in a way that maintains the pattern integrity, and I’m back to where I was with eight rows of the decrease done.

GypsyKnits BFL Fingering purchased from The Loopy Ewe (see link to left) I think. Squish dyed in “Fairy Tree.”

“Shaping a hat” or “Why I like knitting”

I liked the resident non-knitter’s hat so much I decided I wanted a nice hand-knitted watch cap for me. I cast on with some lovely blue face leicester sock wool I had (yuhhmm!) in celery green with hints of blue and pink and boldly went forth. I have 192 stitches in K2P2 ribbing. I’ve worked in the round on 16 inch, 2.0 mm circular needles (or was it 2.25??–I’ll have to go check that one) and I now have an 8.125 inch long tube. Time to start decreases.

Here’s the big dilemma, decrease in 4 sections or 8? Using my handy graphics software, I plotted how an 8-section decrease might end up being shaped. Very nice shape with no blocking required.

Then, I plotted a 4-section decrease. Not as smooth, a little more pointy, but it looks like I can come up with a pretty nice decrease design. It should smooth nicely with some careful blocking. So, will an 8-section decrease pattern look too crowded on the hat? I like the “pin-wheel” pattern the 4-section decrease made on the resident non-knitter’s hat. The decreases stand out rather nicely and look attractive. But, his hat was on a size 3.25 mm and it had less stitches around. With smaller stitches, the 8 section decrese patttern may turn out just fine. Ah, so many choices.

Maybe this is why I like knitting. Either way, this hat will probably come out OK, and if it doesn’t, a tink-ing I will go. No big deal. I wish all of the decisions in my life were so easy to make and so easy to remedy if they don’t turn out the way I want.

I am such a whiner

I made great progress on the present socks. All done. Back to knitting for me. I decided to stop by the local yarn shop–there is one. As in only one. If you want to drive for a little over an hour, there are two. If you want to drive for a couple of hours, you can find several. But here, in our Valley there is one.

They don’t carry a huge selection of sock yarn. I think I have more than they do. But, I wanted to support them, so I stopped by and on a whim, purchased some Kroy self-patterning sock yarn. I figured it would go quick. I’ld get a pair of socks whipped out in no time.

UHHHGG. Why am I whining? The pattern is cute enough, the knitting goes fast enough, but man is it boring. All stockinette. And the yarn feels chunky to me. I don’t like this recommended needle size 3 stuff. And it’s scratchy. And I just don’t like working on them. UHHGG. UHHHGG. UHHHHHGG.

Here they are:

What do you think? Am I just a big baby or what?