Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Not Much New

Well, I don't even have any cute pictures of the animals to post today. I just thought I should check in here because it has been a while. I'm trying to be disciplined about something, for heaven's sake! I have been getting sloppy about so many things.

I have been working on my Teddy Bear blanket at a rate of about 3 rows per sitting. That means that I'm not getting very far, obviously. The thing about this blanket is that it has mitred corners, so it gets bigger every other row by 8 stitches, which means it takes longer and longer to get through a row. I also think that I must be doing something wrong with it. I have 800,000,000 ends that I'm going to have to sew in.

The blanket uses a different color every row and becuase there are 5 colors, there are 5 rows before there is a repetition of the color that you're using. The dilemma here is that I don't know how else to do this but to cut the yarn at the end of each row and start it again when I get to the next use of that color. I don't know if I'm being an idiot -- I have a history of making things more complicated than they need to be -- but I can't figure out any other way to make this work other than what I'm doing. ANY help would be appreciated. I just keep coming to the conclusion that if I left the string connected and just carried it up to the next row where it is used, I would end up with a corner that is really messed up and definitely not neatly attached. Or attached at all, really -- not in a seam sort of way.

The unfortunate thing is that this darned book, as the comments on Amazon stated (I read them AFTER I started with these patterns (bought the book elsewhere) thank you very much), does not give me a clue as to what I should be doing with these ends. Maybe this is the only thing to do, but it doesn't seem very elegant a solution. Uff. I just hope it looks good in the end.

On a brighter note, I finally got to go to the Stitching Salon downtown yesterday and it was wonderful. I mean, there wasn't much to it, but it was a nice environment for knitting purposes (great, comfy looking seats) and they had some FANTASTIC artwork up on the walls there that, as far as I could tell, had nothing whatsoever to do with the Stitching Salon. I appreciated it nonetheless. I was not able to stay and knit there, however, as I had things to do. If I had, I'm sure I would have lots of good stuff to say. But, the people I did talk to there were really nice and welcoming. Good stuff!!

Also, the Socks that Rock shipment was supposed to have left Oregon yesterday, so I hope to get that soon. But, with the Chicago mail system the way it is . . . well, who knows? I can dream, can't I?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Your STR shipment will be there soon. Take heart! It's really neat. If it makes you feel better I just got mine today, however, I can't start working on it until the weekend, at least! It's killing me. I'll bet you get yours before the gal in Finland though!-Tricia

Anonymous said...

Oh, the blanket quandry. I've carried the yarns a row or two, one strand at a time, when working in stockinet from 2 handpainted balls to avoid pooling. The way I did it was that I picked up dangling yarn strand and carried it (wove it in and out) for about 6 stitches, then I dropped the working yarn and knit with the previously dangly yarn.So, the rows I knit with the working yarn were like one complete row plus 6, and it didn't matter that they weren't even rows. The problem with that in your blanket, though, is that you have even-stephen rows, right? And you're carrying several different colors. If you're going to back it like you did the other cute blanket, the carries will be hidden, and you could drop the non-working yarns until about 6 stitches before the end of your row, weave the "new" strand behind the working yarn, and then drop the working yarn and knit with the "new" one. Confusing, I know, I'm not the best explainer. I'm not sure what you could do if you're not going to back the blankie....It would definitely add bulk to every stitch if you carried all 4 or 5 colors every row. Also, do you know the trick to avoid "jog"? I found this useful: http://knittingincolor.blogspot.com/2004/05/color-jogs-these-photos-show-how-hat.html
Please bug me if I can explain better!-Tricia

Gail said...

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