Back on Track

So.  It took me a week to tink back the Saved by a Fish’s Kiss socks.  After a couple of days of being bummed and not so eager to pick them up.  However….little by little I persevered.  Somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1500 stitches tinked.  And now I’m finally moving forward once again, sans vampire-bite holes and with the correct stitch count.

With the tinking came an extra little challenge:  What to do with all the yarn coming undone.  I couldn’t just rewind it, since these socks are being knit from the two ends of one skein.  So no way to really rewind.  I tried to keep the unraveled yarn neat, but in the end there were some….rather intricate tangles.  I used a pair of improvised butterfly bobbins, and managed to get it all sorted out with very little profanity used.  Well….maybe a bit more than very little, but not much, honest.

They’re not terribly convenient to use either, but better than nothing.

I think I’m going to enter these socks into the Yarn and Falafel Fiber Fest WIP competition being held at the end of the month.  Basic vanilla socks, to be sure, but they represent a few new techniques learned, and I will be proud and relieved to finally get these finished after several years in the WIP basket.  All WIPs that are completed by the gathering are eligible for the competition, I will hopefully get a couple more things done and tag them to enter too.

I will again be teaching a double-knitting workshop at the Fest, and again use my Hot Cuppa Coasters pattern to teach.  The pattern has had great success, with two separate KALs done on Ravelry in different groups learning double-knitting, and in at least three off-Ravelry classes in double-knitting around the world.  Three that I know of – those in which the instructors wrote and asked my permission to use the pattern.  I have heard of one class taught in which the pattern was used without anyone contacting me.  Which, since it’s free, is cool, although I much prefer to be asked.  So far, in ten months the pattern has been downloaded by over 1000 people, there are 51 projects up on Ravelry, and it’s in another 94 queues.  Which makes me ridiculously happy.

More about the Y&FFF later!

I intend to get some housekeeping done around the blog soon, the pattern and book pages are woefully behind the times, and there are plans floating around my head to revamp some things as well.  We shall see.

Interesting clouds outside my window…

Shabbat Shalom!

 

Let’s erase today and start over

Well.  The week hasn’t started out as well as it could have.

I got a call from the clinic.  The VNG machine has broken down, so my tests scheduled for two days away have been postponed.  They have no estimate on when repairs will happen, so we can’t even set a new time, they’ll call when the machine is up and running again.  When I expressed my dismay, the receptionist promised to talk to the professor and see if we can get permission to do the tests at the hospital instead.  She’ll call me back when she has more information.  Luckily, the past week has been pretty much OK, but the week before that the vertigo was really making itself a nuisance.

The socks have been sailing along.  Finished both heels and started up the cuffs.

The fit is amazing, and the socks are very comfy.

(Partner made the comment that these are much too pretty to wear on the feet, they should be hung on the wall as art!  I refrained from making a rude retort and kept on knitting…)

Knitting well up the cuff I again tried one on…and disaster.  Somehow on one cuff I managed to make not one but two accidental yarnovers – just a couple of stitches apart, and it looked like a vampire had made two little holes above my ankle.  I was already inches past that point, and I hadn’t noticed the change in stitch count.

I tried dropping one of the stitches down to the yarnover hole, hoping that I could ease the slack from the resulting ladder into the stitches alongside it.  No such luck with this fabric.  Plus the other yarnover is only two or three stitches to the side, and dropping that stitch as well would make the ladder impossible to smooth out.

So….nothing to do but tink.  In the picture above I’d tinked a few rows already.  From both socks.  Since they’re two at a time.  I’m considering somehow just tinking the one sock, but that would require careful counting, and concentration is not at a high right now.   But still – better one than two, much less discouraging and less chance of error as well.

The momentum has definitely been disrupted.  Dagnabbit,  Fie.  Piffle.

Yes, I could have just ignored it and carried on, but those two holes would have driven me batty.  Battier.  Hmph.

Let’s see the week getting better, please.