she really pisses me off. sure, she’s “interesting” and “fascinating” and beautiful, but FOR THE LOVE OF GOD she’s a pain in my ass.
You know the kind I’m talking about – at first you were just crazy about her. She’s so beautiful, interesting (we’ll come back to that one), endlessly fascinating, she adds a lot to your life, you imagine being friends for a long long time.
But then you start to realize that interesting should have quotes around it. She’s “interesting.” She’s beautiful, yeah, and she certainly does add a lot to your life, but the “interesting” and fascinating bits now make you suspect you won’t be friends for a long long time. Consultants call this the PITA factor (pain in the ass), and sometimes add a hidden PITA fee when offering a price quote to a known PITA client. Still, you can’t say this friend is boring. No, you could never say that, that’s for sure. You might say a lot of other things, but boring she’s not. Now and then you throw your hands up and say “that’s it, we’re done. I’ve had it this time.” But you go back…..at least for a while.
That has been the story of my relationship with my Eve Shrugged. At first? Smitten. Totally, totally smitten. Over the moon, endlessly fascinated. And then I hit the wall, not once, not twice, not even thrice (ha, thrice) but many more times than that. Knit frog knit frog knit frog knit frog. Repeat. But finally I got it, thanks to the help of many of you. I made it to the point of adding the sleeve stitches, where you then transition from Eve’s Ribs to Adam’s Ribs, and something went wrong. Knit frog knit frog knit frog knit frog. Repeat. This is why I haven’t been mentioning this project – it’s been in the Bad, Bad Knit Time-Out chair in the corner.
Last night I pulled out my ratty old cursed ball of this yarn and just worked the Adam’s Ribs repeats a few times, and it went fine. No problems at all. I knew the problem must be my haste, so I frogged it all one more time and started anew. Put stitch markers everywhere. Stopped and counted each tiny segment. As the French would say: et voila!
here's the transition point, from Eve's Ribs (on the bottom) to Adam's Ribs
good to go now. for a while.
famous last words.
Anyway. I’m feeling a little more hopeful about the old gal right now, and expect not to have any problems until I hit the next change, which will be (I think) adding the sleeve bells, after the sleeves and body are finished. I think Carol Sunday is a wonderful designer; her patterns are distinctively hers, typically feminine, and quite beautiful. But the way she writes patterns does not connect (like, at all) with the way I think, so they’re very frustrating to me. She’s not a bad designer or pattern writer, and I’m not a bad knitter or pattern reader, we just don’t think the same way so it’s 2 steps forward and 3 steps back for me. Other knitters sail right through.
I haven’t decided whether to take this project or the green tweed ribbon scarf project with me to Rhinebeck (Rhinebeck!!). If you’re going to Rhinebeck, I’ll be wearing my Peasy.
i have been my own worst enemy on this project, and we nearly came to blows. read what a little perseverence’ll do for ya.
ICK and YUCK. As lovely as Saturday’s weather was, today’s is that awful. It’s cold, gray, and drizzly, but not in a let’s-get-together-in-trench-coats-in-Casablanca kind of way. Just in that ick kind of way. The kind that makes the annual GYN trip just that much more pleasant. Yeah.
Here’s the transitional thing that straddles the awful-to-wonderful divide: my shrug. OK, so you would not believe the hell I’ve been through with this thing. First there was the whole oops I did it wrong debacle, resulting in frogging a whole skein’s worth of knitting. OK. Figured it out, cast on, got to the 2nd repeat (where we last left our cheerless heroine) and I made some kind of mistake. Shoulda just looked closely to figure out where I goofed, but I was getting a global sense of despair with this one so I just frogged.
Decided I’d better just try to figure out the stitch pattern before casting on again, so I cast on for 3 pattern repeats plus the edge stitches, and knit through three repeats. GENIUS!! IT WORKED!!! I must have just made an easy mistake the last time, I’m on it. Cast on again – 324 stitches, by the way, screwed up the first row. Frogged. Cast on agai…oh no, too short a tail, by ~5 stitches. Cast on again, got to the end of the row and still had ~30 stitches on the needle. Frogged. Cast on aga….too short a tail, by ~12 stitches (and p.s., how did THAT happen, because I kept the starting point the same as it had been the previous time, when I’d cast on way too many!!!).
Tried again, maybe 2 or 3 more times. It almost became funny. Almost. Maybe later it’ll be like, hysterical. I started thinking it was a sign; my friend Preeti used to see signs in everything, maybe I was just being dense about it. Maybe the universe was screaming at me “RUN AWAY LORI” and I was just sitting there like a dolt, trying again and again. After a couple more times, I finally gave up for the night.
I decided to try one. more. time. And if it didn’t work this time, I was going to cry uncle and decide that me and Carol Sunday, we’re one of those sad couples, the ones who love each other but it’s never going to work, and it’s no one’s fault. I cast on, put a stitch marker down every 10 stitches. Counted again. Counted by the 10s. Counted individually. Counted three more times, just to be sure.
Row 1, WHEW. Row 2, stopped after each 16-stitch repeat and checked obsessively. 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16, ok. Next. I knew if I could just get past the first couple of rows, I’d be in like Flinn. AND I AM!
that baby hugs the curve just beautifully!
and look at that dimensionality!
it's right! it's right! it's right!
I know I said I wouldn’t blast you with more photos and stories about this project until I finished the collar and was working on the body, but you can appreciate the sense of triumph I have at persevering to this point. MAN. The good news is that it’s pretty fast knitting, and I know the pattern by heart (and it’s really very simple, despite me).
the perils of lace and the misery of frogging. again.
Knitters:
Casting on for the 4th time. GRRRR. The wedding shawl is knit from both ends, and then grafted together. I’ve finished the bulk of it – probably 90% – and now I just have to cast on and knit the smallish border on the other end (it’s a 95 st cast-on, and the pattern repeat is only 33 rows). So I sat down last night at the beginning of a movie, cast on (which is a little bit of a pain because you have to double the yarn for the cast on and then drop one strand when you start knitting). So I was casting on, long tail, and hadn’t left enough yarn. I made it to 86 sts. No biggie.
at least this section I'm knitting (frogging) doesn't have nupps!
Start over, get the whole thing cast on, great. Knit knit knit, made it 8 rows in when I realized I was knitting the wrong part of the pattern. Frog frog frog. Cast on. Knit knit knit, something had gone so terribly wrong somewhere and there was nothing to do but cast on again. By the time the movie was over, I’d cast on again and I was 9 rows into the pattern. Go to sleep and start fresh in the morning.
This morning I was knitting the 10th row…hallelujah, finally getting somewhere!…when I realized the row was only 91 sts. I’d gotten to the end of the row, every pattern repeat absolutely perfect, but I didn’t have those 4 sts I should’ve had before the garter border in the last 5 sts. Somehow, I had missed that when I’d knit the previous rows.
So I just frogged it again. I think I’m going to put it aside and make some blueberry bars, and then pick it up again. I’m using KnitPicks harmony circulars from the interchangeable set, and the metal end of the tips, where it joins the cable, is starting to change and make things difficult. It’s not shiny like it was, it’s kind of dull and the stitches don’t slide, which makes the knitting hard.
Knitting is fun! I love knitting! Knitting is my passion! I love knitting! Knitting is fun! (does that sound like I’m trying to convince myself? 
)
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