Karma?

So maybe bragging about progress on the Twisted socks isn't what does me in, it's just mentioning them - after blogging about them the other day, I got hit by the cosmic un-knitting whammy. Yesterday I was happily knitting along when I noticed this little nubbin of a stitch about 3/4 of an inch down from the working needle. Horrors! It was a dropped run-away stitch! The pattern of the twisted rib is such that you would notice right away if you had dropped a stitch - so I know that it happened in the row just previous to the one on the needle...and it had already run a fair distance. I immediately tried to repair the damage using a crochet hook, but this particular yarn is tempermental and that didn't work worth crap. (Actually I already knew that the crochet-fix-it-idea was a lot cause [I had ample experience with "fixing" on the first sock - see previous post], but I had to try - anything to avoid frogging...) Ended up inserting one of those little split-ring stitch markers in the stitch so it couldn't run any farther, and - you guessed it, spent most of the rest of the day unknitting - and again this morning.

The yarn - Bamboo and Ewe is tempermental in that it is both fibery and slippery at the same time. When you go to fix problems using a crochet hook, you inevitable pick up stray fibers - causing even more problems, and yet the stitches gladly (eagerly) slip or run away if given half a chance. In spite of which I do really like the knitted fabric made from this yarn.

Above are a couple pictures of a triangle neck scarf I made from it earlier this year (sorry the scarf is a bit rumpled - it's been folded up in a drawer for a while). I got the idea from one of Katherine Misegades' patterns, but ended up creating my own pattern. Learned a great deal... The original lace pine tree is from one of Barbara Walker's books, and I fiddled around with it to make three different sizes of pine trees. I could have/should have just stayed with the original size. Also, wish I had put more stockinette between/above/below the lace pine trees. I think it would have been visually less confusing and aesthetically more pleasing. I like the size of the triangle just fine - but could have used fewer pine lace thingies. Also, the front ties ended up being a bit too long for my taste. I keep thinking that I'll go back, rip out the last repeat of the design on each tie and re-knit the garter stitch borders. Someday.

I knit it from the tip of the triangle to the shoulder decreases, then put one of the sides on a stitch holder while I continued with the working side. After finishing it, I came back, picked up the stitches-on-hold and knit that side.