Once upon a time…

…there was an overconfident knitter.

She decided to knit a shawl for one of her closest friends.  This overconfident knitter thought that she would get this beauty off the needles within two weeks as that was how long it took her to knit the first one using the same pattern.

The overconfident knitter said to herself’ “Lifelines?  I don’t need no stinkin’ lifelines!”

So she knit on the shawl with complete abandon not even giving a lifeline another thought.

Alas, the overconfident knitter had to rip out or rather unknit not only two rows of lace knitting three times each but three rows of lace knitting three times each.

Three rows of 267 stitches three times each. (That’s only unknitting 2,403 stitches and reknitting 2,403 stitches.)

Did the overconfident knitter learn her lesson?  Oh yeah, but it took her nine times to finally figure it out!

Moral of the story: Use the freaking lifelines!!!!

Top-down progress

April showers bring May flowers so the true colors are not quite shown in the photos below due to the snowy/rainy and cloudy days we’re experiencing this week.

Finished the body and began one sleeve.

I need to find my bamboo double-pointed needles as these metal ones are very slippery and the stitches fall off the ends.  Of course, I could use more than four needles with fewer stitches on the needles.

Picot hem – though I did not cut the green yarn yet.  Just in case I don’t like it, I can rip it out and try something else without worrying about having too much or too little yarn to work with.  I really hope blocking will keep the bottom edge from curling.  If not, I’ll need to come up with another plan.

Cable cast-on two stitches and bind off five.  Place the last bind off stitch back on the left needle, cable cast-on two stitches and repeat to the end of the row.  Not hard but it uses more yarn.

If you have been following me for some time, you know I don’t like to sew seams.  However, seams do add structure.  So I made fake seams by doing a reverse stockinette stitch at the center underarm point all the way down to the hem.

It looks like a seam and will (hopefully) keep the sweater from twisting out of shape.  Have you ever used that technique?  More importantly – does it work?

Another Kindness

My BFF picked out this Knit Picks Chroma Twist in the Confetti colorway for a Kindness Shawl that I offered to knit for her.

The yarn arrived last week so I immediately wound it into a ball (no small feat as it soon became a huge tangled mess!) and cast on.

This is how the colors are progressing at Row 40.

I’ll switch to circular needles once the stitch count grows and won’t fit comfortably on the straight ones.

PS  The top-down-circular-yoke sweater is still in progress.  Finished the main body and picked up the sleeve stitches.  I never said I was a monogamous knitter.

Making it up – part 2

It’s been dark and dreary all week with clouds and rain so I wasn’t able to take pictures of my top-down-circular-yoke sweater.  At least all the snow has melted from last week!

The colors are so close in tone that they almost blend together. 

It’s very difficult to tell them apart while knitting particularly under incandescent lights.

I decided to go with a two-row stripe and since I have one more ball of the mallard (green) color, I began with it and will use it as the button band color. 

The increase rows are distracting to me but that’s the nature of this beast.  Hopefully blocking will even out those stitches so they are less noticeable.The wrong side.The neck edge is just four rows of garter stitch.  I was thinking of making a picot hem for the sweater but keep the garter stitch at the sleeve hem.  Just not sure.  Would two different hem edges look dumb?