Thrills! Chills! Secrets and Cables!

I am not a perfectionist. "Good enough", or "that'll do" are things I often say. This extends to my knitting, too, in most cases. Have an extra stitch at the end of a row? Well, looky here - if I knit this one and this other one together, problem solved! Good enough! No one will ever know. And I'll stop looking at that spot eventually, I'm sure.

But sometimes, "good enough" just doesn't work out. Sometimes it's an unforgivable, unmistakable, uh - mistake. For me, that usually means ripping out the entire thing and starting from scratch. I do that a lot. It tends to make any knitters nearby blanch and clutch their chests, but I've got enough "Process Knitter" in me that I don't mind it much. (Mind you, one time someone actually grabbed the project away from me before I could completely frog it and picked up all my stitches. It was interesting. And great.)

But sometimes the project has just gone too far for that. And then things like this happen:

That's six dpns and my Denise circular tenuously holding together a secret project. Kind of makes you hold your breath just looking at it, doesn't it? Like the climax of a scary book or movie, where you're pretty sure everyone will come out alive, but you don't know absolutely for sure.

This story does have a happy ending, though. Behold.

All better!

Back to "good enough" for me.

Labour Day Hijinks Continued

Sunday was another great day. It started with my finally getting to give this.



When Jodi told me she was expecting, I started to look for the perfect blanket pattern for her baby. Jodi likes strong, bold colours, and tends toward the non-traditional. So I didn't want to make anything in pastels or neutrals.

Boy, howdy did I find an alternative.



Pattern: Wild Stripes Blanket from Knitty's summer 2005 issue.

Changes: None, really. The yarn was Knit Picks merino style, as called for in the pattern. I love these colours, and the yarn is lovely to work with. The knitting, which I though was taking forever somewhere around the middle, was really straightforward. Maybe even a little coma-inducing, if it weren't for the frequent changes in colour. My size turned out to be a bit bigger than the pattern said it should be, but still a very good size. The backing is a slightly heavy cotton, from Fabricland. I chose to use the green piping to match.


The sewing of the knitted portion to the fabric backing and through the piping was rather brutal. But I knew if I put it down, I'd never pick it up again, so I began one Saturday morning, and finished late that night. The embroidery, which I thought would take only a couple of hours (I'm kind of dumb that way) took another few days.

But I do love the way it turned out in the end. Totally worth the time and boredom and pain.

Speaking of pain, I am suffering an aggravating end-of-summer cold, and I am a wimp about being sick. So I'm going to bed - further Labour Day adventures to come!

Mystery and Socks

This past weekend was a strange combination of almost complete laziness and astounding progress. The laziness is captured by the fact that I rarely left the couch, and somehow got through a complete rewatch of the first season of Doctor Who (Sigh. As much as I love David Tennant, I still miss Nine.)

But the couch sitting and the tv watching (well, laptop-watching, to be more accurate) on Saturday did enable me to make a great deal of progress on... something I can't tell you about. Sorry. Stealth knitting is just so, so bad for blogging. But if you're on Ravelry, you can look me up and see it in my WIPs, if you're dying of curiosity. Sunday's couch-sitting was due to a serious inability to estimate the time required to finish that same project. But the end is in sight, if I can just stick to it a little longer. This is what I get for venturing outside the realms of knitting.

For a break from the massive project that doesn't seem to have an end, I worked on and finished my first pair of Jaywalkers.



The fit's not perfect, and I didn't get the pattern repeat in the yarn quite right. But I still like them.

I vacillated throughout the entire process of knitting these up between the opinion that the yarn is fun and funky, and the other opinion that it's just gawdawful. Now that they're done, I'm going with funky. It was fun to knit with, with the frequent changes in colour and pattern.

Overall, not bad for a second pair of socks. I can't wait to cast on the third. Sock yarn is so fun!

Update: The Neverending Project is ended! Pictures will be on Ravelry as soon as I can get some decent light, and here in the blog as soon as it's gifted.

The Elephant in the Room

I finished a little project a couple of weeks ago, and am glad that I can finally share it now that it's been gifted.

This is Eloise.

This is the first toy I've knitted, and I really enjoyed it. I liked the feeling of bringing a little creature into being. When I stitched the second eye into place, I felt like I was meeting a new little person. And her name was Eloise, for some reason. (Have I mentioned that I live above the garage? It may be I am affected by fumes.)

Eloise is knit in Knitpicks Shine Sport, in Cloud colour, and following the Lovable Toys pattern in Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Aside from errors, I didn't deviate from the pattern except in yarn substitution. I wanted something that would be a little more forgiving of baby substances than the alpaca that the pattern called for. The ears turned out much floppier than expected, but I love them. They're soft, and I'm sure will be good to chew on, when the time comes.

This is Chelsea.

I hadn't had a chance to meet Chelsea yet, to ask what kind of animal she'd like. So I went with the elephant, because I know Chelsea's mum, Chrystal, is a big fan. Chelsea seems okay with this.

They're pretty well-matched in size, so far.

Eloise is far from perfect, but I like to think that Chelsea likes her anyway.