Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Survival of the Fittest

I have this cockamamie idea about my Olympic Knitting.

First, last night I did some training - pattern swatching. I figure I'm allowed because of my comprehensionally-challenged brain. It was a major bafflement, so I fired up InDesign and made me a chart. It's lovely. I'm going to use a chart. For some reason symbols work the way abbreviations don't.

Second, I'm having trouble deciding how exactly I'm going to get gauge on my socks. The pattern gauge is 8.25 to the inch, the needle called for is a 2.25mm, and I have only a 2.0mm and a 2.5mm. So. (deep breath.) The first thing I need to do is actual gauge swatch,

but as you can see from my photo, my OK yarn is in a hank. Hank hank hank. I love the word "hank." So, order of business today is to go beg LYS owner to wind this yarn for me.

Yesterday I was all set to buy a ball winder and swift, and then GB reminded me that I need to spend about $300 getting RAM for my computer. Because it's crashing. I called around today and nobody has the 2GB chips. What to do...Maybe I can find it on Apple's website. Ergo, no ball winder/swift. Pfft.

Which brings me to how exactly I've lost my mind. I knitted a small hat for a friend's new baby about two weeks ago. I did something wrong with end-weaving and the darn thing frazzed, frayed and unwound! NEVER had that happen before. Big hole. Hat ruined. So I bought some gor-geous Karabella 8 in two colors - a dark reddish-brown and a sky blue - and it's going to become New Hat. I thought at first I would do the stocking cap in Holiday Knits, but the mom was worried he'd grab for it. So it's going to be a regular hat, which I could finish in a day...only I thought, what if it's a cool striped hat? As in every other row or something? Good opportunity for a tiny bit of stranding, but nothing truly vexing. Although I am keeping in mind the Yarn Harlot's test that proved Fair Isle knitting is faster than solid color knitting, I am trying to be realistic...and I'm wondering if I ought to write out a chart and make this hat a Fair Isle hat.

See, maybe the brown is the base color, and it tapers off and blends with the blue, then it goes to blue (for the decrease part)...wouldn't that be cool? Only...it needs to be done by the 14th. Because that's her last day at work.

Am I totally insane?? It's two days before the Olympics, I have a pair of socks to finish by Friday, and I'm already trying to betray my Olympic knitting with stuff like this.

4 Comments:

Blogger Chris said...

Breathe in, breathe out... Can the hat maybe wait for 16 days?!

4:21 PM  
Blogger Zonda said...

Boy we all are having last minute KO problems huh! Hope you get yours worked out...decisions, decisions huh!

As for me...UGH, not enough yarn...but working on it.

5:59 PM  
Blogger Katie said...

hehe. im trying to finish a pair of jaywalkers (yes thats means two and i'm about 2/3 done with ONE) by saturday. uhhh...

8:15 PM  
Blogger Jen said...

I think that's a GREAT idea. Obviously need practice with jogless jog, since that's where the hat unravelled last time...

3:25 PM  

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