What a Life!

I got the sleeve’s done on the stripey sweater I’m making. All that remains is the button-band and then the neck-band. Here it is in all it’s glory:

No progress on the hat I’m making for myself.

I finished one sock – remember, my goal was one sock per month? – and started on the next one. Basically all I’ve done is cast on and work one row. Here are my socks:

Joey has outgrown his first hat, and the one I made him to be used next is too big. Mary Ellen (from my knitting group) made Ben a cute little jacket you can see him wearing here:

She thought the sleeves might be too short – turns out they were just fine – and she gave me an extra ball of yarn to fix them if I needed to.

Since I’m the nerd who has all of the yarn in my stash earmarked for a specific project, I didn’t have any yarn that I could use to make another hat. Then I saw this yarn on top of the dresser and thought it would be perfect. I made a hat for Joey, which he wore yesterday…

…and since that hat used up exactly half of the yarn in that ball (as indicated by the weight of the hat and the weight of the remaining yarn), I am knitting a second one from the top down that you can see here posing along with the first hat.

On the pattern writing front…I must confess that when I sit down to actually write out a pattern for something I’ve designed, I seem to forget all the details I hate about most patterns. So in addition to writing notes about what I did when I knit something, I’ve been writing down pet peeves in order to find my voice.

Here is a great example of how my pattern writing differs from what you usually see:

Directions for Seed Stitch from the Vogue Knitting Stitchionary Volume 1:
(multiple of 2 sts pl 1)
Row 1 (RS): K1, *p1, k1; rep from * to end.
Rep row 1.

Tana’s version:
Set-up row/round: alt k1, p1
Following rows/rounds: knit the purl sts and purl the knit sts.

It doesn’t matter how many stitches you have or whether you’re knitting flat or in the round. You know exactly what to do next by looking at the next stitch on your needle.

When I was a new knitter, I can’t tell you how many times I had to go back and count how many sts I had done on the current row in order to know what sittch to do next. Knitting even the simplist stitch patterns was not mindless but rather tedious and very time-consuming. Once I learned how to read my work, it became far more “mindless” and enjoyable.

Moral of the story? If you want your knitting to be “mindless,” learn how to read your work and simple stitch patterns like seed stitch become as easy as stockinette.

That is a mere taste of the type of things you can expect when I finally get a pattern written and ready to be published.

I have three or four patterns in the works, but part of the hold-up is my desire to have a basic design for my patterns, including a cover sheet. When I get that settled, I’ll probably offer more than one new pattern in a short amount of time. My goal was to publish one pattern per month this year, and in the large scheme of things, I’m right on track.

Happy knitting to all!