I'm a knot-maker!

A dying breed

I'm not gonna lie to you

knitting with double pointed needles was confusing. Ms. Stoller offered precious little advice in her book, and what was there only managed to confuse me. Instead I found the videos on KnittingHelp to indeed live up to their name and be very helpful. I've made three fingerless gloves as of today and for the first two I've had to watch the video in order to start. The most confusing part of knitting with double pointed needles is, unfortunately, the first row. After casting on the stitches and distributing them evenly onto three needles (it's easiest to put stitches on the middle needle last)

Make sure that all the stitches have the bumpy part facing inward

Position the needles into a triangle with the needle with the live yarn on top and the middle needle on the right side. Hold this in your left hand.

Hold a fourth needle in your right hand. Coming at the third needle (the one with the first stitch you cast on) on the inside of the triangle of needles start knitting.

For the first 3-4 stitches you can use both the live yarn and the tail so that you won't have to weave the tail in later.

Always make sure to start off with the same positioning. It's really easy to go the wrong way and suddenly have a row of purls where there should be knits. You should also attach a safety pin in between the first and last needle so that you know when a row ends.

As you continue to knit it gets easier. The needles stay in position easier and you can knit with the fourth needle on the outside.

I was really anxious about the cables because the instructions say to hold the cable needle to the back of work. I don't know if this was obvious to other people or not, but it wasn't to me. The back of the work is the inside of triangle.

Another very confusing part was the thumb. I've been finding out that I don't follow written directions as well as I thought I did. I feel like I'm in grade school and I've been given one of those tests with a serious of questions but the first instruction is don't do anything until you've read all the instructions and the last instruction is don't do any of the instructions at all but meanwhile you've spun around in a circle and screamed your name out loud. As I've made the past few gloves, I've realized that I've read things into the instructions that aren't there at all.

The pattern says, "Work 18 rounds in 4x1 Rib. Next Round: Using waste yarn, k7." For the first two gloves I stayed in rib pattern. Whoops.

For binding off the thumb, the pattern says, "BO loosely." I tried to bind off with the Picot method that is used on the top of the glove. Which, by the way, I'm not 100% convinced I'm doing correctly but it looks pretty much like it should-I think.

Also on the thumb the first time I did it I wound up using all 5 double pointed needles. There was so many wooden spokes sticking out of the glove that I could hardly hold onto it.
It's supposed to look like this:

One day I'll write some instructions about how to pick up stitches, but right now I'm still figuring it out. When it comes out like this


I just take out the stitches and do it again.
Oh and there's this problem.

But in the end, I'm pretty happy with the result.

Fight with Knitting

Knitting and I have been in fight. Now before you get too worried, I’ll let you know we’ve made up and we are ready to continue this relationship. Neither of us have changed, we’ve just come to some understandings about each other. Why a fight you ask? It’s not fair. I knew when I started this that obviously I would be buying yarn all the time, but I had no idea that I would constantly be buying kneedles. I really thought that I could buy one straight kneedle, one circular kneedle and a set of double pointed and I’d be set. So naïve. So uninformed. Instead, it seems that each project requires a kneedle purchase. That’s not true-I knitted my first two scarves on the same 6.0 bamboo kneedles. But I had left over yarn and I thought this would be a great opportunity to learn about circular kneedles and make a lovely, warm brown hat.

I thought knitting on circular kneedles would be a good lead in to knitting on double pointed kneedles. I went to craft store part of Pearl which is hidden behind and across the street from Pearl Paint and hunted through the yarn looking for kneedles. Defeated I went to the front and asked for them. Even as the words came out of my mouth, I foolishly realized that the knitting kneedles were behind the counter and, now, right in front of me. Apparently old ladies like to steal them and use them as weapons. I guess the woman at the counter doesn’t knit because when I asked for size 6 circular kneedles she didn’t look at me funny, didn’t ask any other questions, just handed me a pair. Little did I know that the 29” circulars I received would never make a hat for my normal human sized head. When I found out that "Because the circumference of the piece being knit must be at least 2 inches (5.08 cm) larger than the length of circular needles[sic], this will determine when to choose each needle type," I was thoroughly disheartened. Not only am I constantly in need of kneedles, but now I had bought two for one project. I don’t even know what I can eventually use these for. Of course it took awhile for me to figure this out and that’s when knitting and I got into a fight.

I’ll skip the pouting and feet stamping and go right to the reconciliation. I decided to forgo the hat for now and move right along to the fingerless gloves that I coveted and also promised to my friends who are waiting patiently. I found this great online yarn store, Yarn and Fiber. They had all the Debbie Bliss yarn I could want for 75 cents cheaper a skein than Seaport Yarn and they gave me free delivery. I don’t know if this was some sort of one time ploy to get me hooked or an all the time thing, but I’ll let you know when I find out. I figured that ordering online would give me and knitting some time to cool off.

This was not true.

This place has the fastest response time and delivery of any type of store I’ve ever encountered on the web. I ordered at 10:50. At 10:52 I received an email telling me that they had received the order. At 11:04, I received an email telling me that my order had been put together and shipped! Three days later I had yarn. Crazy fast. I got the kneedles from Knit Picks along with some materials for Sheldon. And then I was ready. Well not mentally, but materially.