January 28, 2013

Curse of Dumbness?

...I don't know what's going on with me, you guys.  I was working on my mitten last night and things were going well, but then I noticed I had a weirdly loosey-goosey stitch.  This led to a series of problems I will not list here, but which ended in the frogging of my mitten (grumbleSOBgrumble).

I don't know if its my state of mind (not enough concentration?) or just some weird knitting curse (those exist, right?) but this is super frustrating!  I'm trying to actually work on things only to get thwarted at every turn (by my own mistakes)!

On the plus side, the needle I was using for my mitten was kind of annoying me (it wasn't really as long as I would've liked for magic loop), so maybe I can use this as an excuse to buy one >:)

January 25, 2013

Knitting would be easier if I wasn't so dumb.

I've been making an attempt to start my Raphaelite Socks for several days now.  First I thought the beginning of my toe looked weird, so I pulled it out.  Then I wasn't sure I was really doing the increases right, so I pulled it out, looked it up and started again. 

Things were going well until yesterday (still working on the toe, mind you), when I counted my stitches and realized one of my needles was missing one.  I assumed I'd accidentally forgotten to increase on one end of the previous round.  Alas, I had just finished a knit round, so I had to tink back that entire round and half the next to get to the trouble spot...but both my increases were there.  Which meant I either dropped a stitch (which I couldn't see), or I forgot an increase SOMEWHERE ELSE.  So I pulled the entire thing out again, because I didn't want to keep un-knitting for forever.  UGH.

I don't know how its possible I have managed to muck up this project four times and I'm only ON THE TOE OF A SOCK.  !!

January 21, 2013

An attempt to break away from monogamy.

You would think that having had two weeks of vacation during the holidays would have prompted knitting, or maybe even a finished project, right?  Alas, in my case you would be wrong.  I spent the majority of my vacation sitting on my bum playing video games (nerd alert).

Now that I'm back at work and doing a task that allows me to listen to podcasts, I've been making myself listen to the knitting ones because I know that they'll inspire me.  Indeed, it seems to be working because I've been staring at patterns on Ravelry again, and even played with Judy's Magic Cast-on last night (in preparation for starting a pair of socks.)

I'm going to try something new this year.  Typically, I only knit one thing at a time (though, technically I've had the Chroma Striped Scarf lurking in the background for awhile), but this usually results in things languishing forever when I'm not in the mood to work on them (all the pairs of socks I've ever knit, my mittens....).  While listening to an episode of the Knitmore Girls podcast, Gigi mentioned that she liked having a few things going on at once so that she had knitting for every situation--i.e. something easy for when you're maybe waiting in the doctor's office.  I thought it was a great idea, so I'm making an effort to start some more projects.  I plan on continuing to work on my Bella Mittens, I'm going to start my Raphaelite Socks (FINALLY), and I want to break down and finally do a knitted toy (which I've been wanting to try forever)--likely a knitted monster

I'm also hoping this will actually give me enough to blog about, instead of the usual posts where I talk about NOT knitting, haha!