A blog about my life, knitting, and other stuff.

November 9, 2005

Needled

With Amble out of the way I started the Latvian Socks from Folk Socks for the Folk Socks Knitalong. It begins with a picot edge. You knit in plain stockinette for several rows than work a turning row of K2tog, yo. Knit more stockinette and then fold in half and knit the cast on edge with the following row. That can be a little fussy so I tried doing a provisional cast on instead so I could just pick up live stitches instead of digging them out of the cast on edge. Eunny mentioned that when knitting her Union Square Market Pullover that she did a provisional cast on using the cable of another needle instead of waste yarn. How brilliant is that? It makes casting on much easier and you don't need to then transfer the stitches back on to a needle.

So I began doing the two circular method using 2 16" Crystal Palace size 0 circulars and a third Crystal Palace needle to hold the provisional cast on (32" size 1). It sucked.



The business end of a 16" circular is 3.75" long, about an inch shorter than in the larger needle sizes. It was impossible to get a good hold of them so I knit the first several rounds slowly and loosely. Wes was out for the night so I made the bold decision to gather up the kids and take them with me to the shop. I was also trying to figure out what yarn to use for the Child's Socks in Shell Pattern from Knitting Vintage Socks. I haven't even purchased the book yet. So my plan included getting the book and the yarn for those socks too. You know how this all turned out, right?

[Insert aphorism about planning here.]

Ten minutes of "Don't touch that!" "Sit down." "Sit DOWN." "I said don't touch that." " I mean get your hands off of that." "Sit!" and I was ready to leave with just my needle.* On my way back to the car I realized that I was so distracted I bought a US1 instead of a US0. Another quick run through of the store and I was back home knitting.

Ahhh, much better.



*for magic loop method instead.