Knitting Sucks!

Or at least mine does lately. Quilting is starting to look better and better.

Current Knitting
I restarted my lace project...again. This time, I cast on and knit a few rows in plain stockinette stitch. Then I purled one row of slippery yarn, in a color that easily contrasts with my laceweight merino. Then I put dozens of stitch markers wherever they would help me keep my stitch pattern correct.

Then I mysteriously found two extra stitches, dropped about a dozen stitches while trying to fix that and said "fuck it!"



I will go back to it this week, but I had to put it away for a while before I burned the yarn.

I cast on for a simple ribbed watch cap for Thaddeus so that I could have some mindless knitting to work on.



It's hard to see the rib because of the color, and harder to see the size since it's on a 12 inch needle. I will finish the hat this week before I restart the lace AGAIN!

Readers' Comments/Questions
Concerning the new lace project, Marilyn asks, "Is this lace pattern knitted lace or lace knitting? That is, patterned on one side or on both? Patterning, e.g., yo's, on both sides can be extremely taxing, especially if you find you have to include a yo in a decrease."

Since it's on both sides, I'm assuming that would be lace knitting. And yes, "extremely taxing" is a mild descriptive of how I feel about it right now.

Lisa asks, "I understand the theory of a safety line, but not actually how one does it--you thread the dental floss or what have you through a row of stitches so that you have something to rip back to?"

The safety line gets threaded through the active stitches, not knitted in as you go along. The technique works best when you're working on a cable needle. Ever five or ten rows of successful knitting, I move all my stitches to the thinner cable between the needles and thread through a slippery yarn.

Duffy asks, "You mentioned yesterday that you think the chart may be off. Have you considered taking the instructions and doing your own?"

I'm pretty certain it's my knitting, and not the chart that's off (I was just trying to blame someone else). Once I understand this stitch pattern a little better, I will probably rewrite the 8 row pattern repeat in shorthand, so I can remember it more easily.