In Which Bad Things Happen to Good Knitters

Oh, dear! It's been a rough week. Let us start at the beginning. You know when you're knitting along on a pair of socks and everything is going tickety boo and then you run out of yarn? Why does this happen to me so frequently? (That was a rhetorical question and as such does not require a response.) Harken back to happier times when one sock was complete and hope sprang eternal.

Didn't everything seem to going swimmingly? I thought so, too. So, what to do? My standard protocol is to change the toe color. Fine. This meant knitting off the first sock to finish the second to the point where I could add a different color toe.

Oh, Pomatomus! You are a vicious creature! When I got around to doing my toes for the second time, I changed things up a bit and fudged a Star of Four Points toe based on a Star of Three Points toe from Knitting Vintage Socks. I like them. It's like having a wonky starfish on my toes to calm the Pomatomus. Let's take a moment to appreciate this FO (finished object) before moving on.

Cheeky monkey!

Moving right along......Thursday night, T. and I helped some friends take their first steps toward becoming knitters. Learning to knit can be a challenge. People who knit tell you how relaxing it is, what an outlet, etc but when you're learning, you're more likely to get a tension headache. You have to actually watch what your hands are doing (remember that?) and you can't just drop a stitch without consequences. (Tanya, I'm talking to you.) So, knitters in the room, please put your hands together and welcome Tanya, Brianne, and Caterina to the halls of knitwear. They'll be purling in no time.

So, if you're a regular reader of this blog (that's you, T.), then you'll know that T.'s been bitten by a lace bug. Well, me too. The problem is I thought I could make up a pattern for a lacy scarf based on some stitch books I got from my local library and I'd be off to the races. It just wasn't meant to be. I tried a provisional cast on with one set of lace stitches. Didn't like it. Frogged. Tried again with a Picot edge and then starlight lace but that wasn't doing it for me either. Provisional cast on again. No idea what to knit. I spent the last 2 days trying to work this out when I realized that I just need to put away the lace weight for now. I also packed up all the library books and sent them back from whence they came. Maybe one day I'll pick it up and knit someone else's pattern or maybe even make up one of my own. Just not right now.

Then it occurred to me that I should go home again, figuratively speaking. When things aren't working out (ie lace, socks) and you just need a place to feel safe, you go home. Knitting home for me is a dishcloth. Dishcloths are the first thing I learned how to knit and I find them strangely comforting when other projects fail me. (There's still hope for my butterfly but I don't want to jinx it.)

So raise a glass to knitting. It's not always pretty, but it's always there when I need it.