Thursday, March 8, 2007

Well then... (Rockin' Sock Club Spoiler)

So, I have had some good moments and some bad ones over the past couple of days (primarily yesterday). Mostly things are very good: there is sun, snow is melting, my cats (and husband) rock, and I got my first Rockin' Sock Club shipment yesterday. That shipment was like manna from heaven. I thought it was never going to get here -- I've been reading for what, a week?, about other people's drooly moments when they got their package and I've just been dying to see it!! I avoided all the spoilers, etc. and finally it was here.

I nearly tackled the postman (recurring theme among us in the club) when I saw that he had a package that looked like the ones posted on the Sock Club blog, but I was so afraid that it wouldn't be the package that instead, I sat in my car holding my breath, waiting to see if he would take it into my yard and put it on my porch. Much to my amazement, he did, and I got to fondle the yarn finally.

I will start by saying that this yarn is not a color that I would normally pick out and neither is the pattern. However, as I stated on the RSC blog, I am truly excited about the opportunity to delve into different patterns and colors than I have before. This is exactly why I joined the club -- to do new things! So, I am very happy about this shipment -- I think the yarn is incredible and beautiful even though it's different from what I would normally do. It is soft and the colors are soooo rich. I have spent more time fondling this yarn than is healthy and I don't think I've spent quite so much time just holding onto my yarn before. Seriously. It's kind of sick.

Just to prove how sick I am, here is a picture of the yarn becoming part of the family (please ignore the nasty walls, etc. -- long story).


And, here is my cat Chopper welcoming the folder and all of the package contents into the home (I just hope he's willing to give them back to me some time -- I DO need that pattern, after all).


So, what is the bad news? The puckering on my blanket. The puckering, amazingly, does not come from the tying together of the loose ends, but from the seed stitch on the outside. This is
what I think is the problem, anyway. I think that when I switched to seed stitch it changed the gauge of the knitting and therefore, it tightened up -- hence the puckering. So, I have devised a clever plan (hopefully) that should fix it. Maybe. I realized that it would be impossible for me to change my tension through that whole bit of knitting around the outside of the blanket, so I am going to frog to the beginning of the seed stitch and I am going to go up one size needle to see if that will loosen it up enough to do the job.

Of course, that won't help w/ the puckering in the center, but I plan on pretending like that isn't happening. Maybe I can block some of that out? PLEASE keep your fingers crossed for me!!

1 comment:

Trish said...

Hi! I love the blanket. So cute. Another idea is to maybe not knit the seed stitch in the round. Could you instead knit each side individually? This may help with the puckering.