Naked needles

I like straight knitting needles.  I’m not a fan of circulars, so when I put my knitting away in my bag, I usually have the “live” knitting needle pointing up so when I pull the knitting out of the bag, it doesn’t slide off.  Well, I thought I should pack my knitting bag safely this weekend so I had all the needle points facing down.  The bag I’m using is zippered and I didn’t think the twins would open it, I just didn’t want them to fall on it and get hurt.

After the twins were tucked in bed, I wanted to show my daughter the Herringbone neckwarmer I was knitting.  And as I pulled the needles out of the bag, the needles were naked.  The neckwarmer was still in the bag.

I really wanted to say a bad word but I gasped instead.

Normally it’s not that hard to put stitches back on the needles.  I only had 30 to deal with.  But this stitch isn’t normal.  I have about six inches knitted and I haven’t figured out how fix a wrong stitch.  I managed to get all the stitches back on the needle but something is not quite right.

I’ll have to wait until this evening when I’m in a better frame of mind to see if I can figure out what went wrong.

10 day work week

This week seemed like it was 10 days long.

Yay!

I had a lot of hurry-up-and-wait stuff going on at work this week.  I had to put together 10 binders of materials for a meeting Wednesday evening I was not attending.  Most of the documents needed updating and I had to wait for those to be done before I could print.  I filled the copier with paper before I started printing the materials and it holds 3000 sheets of paper at a time.  I refilled it yesterday.  That’s a lot of paper.

I’m headed to my daughter’s right after work tonight.  She and one of the twins (Z to be exact) have bronchitis.  Her husband has to work this weekend so I’m going to help her do whatever needs done.  I’m even taking dinner.

And Irish soda bread.  It’s only available around St. Patrick’s Day and I love this stuff.

I hope to have some time to knit so I’m taking a few things to work on while I’m there. 

  1. The neckwarmer.  (See the last post.)  This has been slow going.  Of course, I have been pretty busy every evening this week: laundry, Zumba class, running errands, laundry again, packing.  So you can see I haven’t worked on it too much.
  2. A new sweater.  Tangerine Twist from Knitty Summer 2007.  I bought yarn last summer for a project that escapes me so I have enough yarn for this.  I think this shape will be much better for me than the papaya cardi fail.
  3. Mitts for me.  Treads, Jiffy Mitts, or Fetching using yarn from my stash with enough to make all three pair but I’m not going to cast on all of them.  Treads has a new stitch to learn.  (Thank you Cpeezers for this great tutorial on the lateral braid.) Jiffy Mitts uses fingering weight.  I’m still not over the two pairs of Music Mitts I just finished.   Fetching has cables which I’ve never done.  I’ve been knitting off and on since I was 10 years old and I’ve never done cables other than a swatch.
  4. Seamless slippers.  Pattern on the right.  Mindless knitting and one can never have too many seamless slippers.

Have a great weekend.

Neck Warmer

Last Friday I stopped at my LYS (local yarn store) to buy something to make the Herringbone Neck Warmer.  They don’t carry Malabrigio so I bought something else.

Araucania yarn

The red one didn’t have the depth of color I wanted but I didn’t know that until I took the hank apart to roll into a ball.  (side note: I don’t have a ball winder.  I prefer to do that myself.  Really.)  The red was dull.  Anyway, I put it back into the twisted configuration as I intend to exchange this for something else.  It was a little too pricy to keep in my stash.

I love the blues, purples, and greens in the other hank and the Herringbone stitch is beautiful.  And dense.  Eventually I will be able to knit it without saying the directions aloud.

One thing I haven’t figured out is how to correct a mistake using this stitch.  This stitch involves slipped stitches and psso (pass the slipped stitch over) and I’ve ripped this back many times…like about nine times.  I have 24 rows knit (about four inches) and I know I made a mistake way back around row 6.  I knew it as I was knitting that row.  It adds character.  Besides this is for me and I’m ok with some character.

If there’s enough light when I get home, I will show you my progress.