You know how sometimes you're going along, and every thing's going more or less predictably and you feel completely in control of your life? (I suspect that this may be a feeling that disappears forever once one has children. I don't actually know, though.) But then something happens, and it turns out that you really aren't at all in control of your life and that whatever you thought things were, they're actually completely different? That's been my life of the past 4 to 6 weeks, in a good way. At the beginning of January, I thought I had everything in control in terms of work, school, and my rather limited social life. Now, I'm grateful that I'm not actually in charge of my life, since work is better than expected, my grad class is not what I expected, and socially things are so much better than I could have wished for. The only downside to good work, lots of class, and the revival of my obsession with dancing? Not so much time for knitting.
But I have been knitting!
I finished the Monkey socks for my sister.
I'm really pleased with the way they turned out. I really liked the yarn, in terms of the way it behaved, the way it felt, and most especially in the color.
And the Monkey pattern is a delightful one. As far as I am concerned, its best attribute is that it has enough stretches of knit stitches that it can be knit while doing other things, but that the purl bits do a fantastic job of breaking up the monotony if you're just knitting.
On the topic of purls, someone (Kathy maybe?) asked if I had trouble with laddering at the needle changes in purl stitch. I don't, and I think I know why (let's not dwell on how long I spent analyzing my own knitting technique to figure this out).
When I knit, I start a new needle by sticking it under the other needles and into the stitch, like this:
But when I purl, I start the new needle by bringing it over the old needle and under the one that has the stitch I'm about to purl, like this:
The result is that in each case, the working yarn has the least distance possible to go between needles, and therefore less opportunity to ladder.
As you can tell, I've started a sock, but if I tell you about it (and the other knitting I've been doing) now, two things will happen: 1) I'll be up much later than I'd like (I haven't gone to bed before 11 in over a week, and I get up at 5ish on weekdays, so you can understand why I'm ranking sleep so high on the list tonight) and 2) I won't have anything to blog about for the next few days (as I said, I really haven't been knitting that much - it'd be a shame to blow it all on one post).
So, tune in next time for a mystery episode. Will it be socks? Scarfs? Argyle? Baby sweaters? A baby blanket? Only time will tell.
2 comments:
It sounds like you're living an "Alice in Wonderland" sort of life. And, yes, once you have children, you will realize that control of your life is merely an illusion. You might be the one in charge, but you won't ever really have control. Children are like that.
The monkey socks look beautiful.
Oh, there you are! I've been worried. Thanks for the purl lesson. I tried the Monkeys a while back and had a horrible time with it, and looked on Ravelry, and it seemed that no one else did. I just knew I had to be doing something different. (Note, I didn't say wrong. I subscribe to EZ's philosophy, I think, she's the one who said something about there's no wrong way) I did see somewhere a no-purl version, and thought about that. Thanks for explaining out what you did. I may get brave and put the Monkey's back on my queue. After I get a little done on the other eighty-eleven WIP's. That may have been a slight exaggeration. Or it may not. I don't list everything on ravelry now.
Oh, and you're totally on on that whole control of life with kids thing. It's a facade. I consider it a good day if no one's bleeding by bedtime.
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