...or maybe two. I realized yesterday that I take every opportunity NOT to knit on the Knoxville Seathwaite hat and that had to stop. Once I had the stepstool assembled (god, I love furniture-in-a-box; "some assembly required" are three of my favorite words. no, really) I resolved to sit my butt down on the couch and knit on that hat exclusively for the rest of the day and evening. I did just that, and I thought about what was annoying the crap out of me about it as I did. First, it was the DPNs, switching needles every 20 stitches was making me crazy so I got the circulars back out with a few stitch markers to separate the repeats (why I didn't think of that in the beginning I do not know), knitted the hat onto them, and that helped. Then I penciled in "back" or "front" by to the cable crossing symbols next to the chart so I didn't have to keep looking at the descriptions below the fold AND (this is a big one) suddenly the chart symbols started to make logical sense to me. I could see which stitch(es) would go behind and which direction the cable needle needed to go. Eureka! I got through the first chart repeat (20 rounds) before I called it a night. Once I'm done here I'll be back knitting on it until my fingers give out or it's bedtime, whichever comes first.
Oh! I almost forgot the most frustrating part of yesterday's knitting. I got up to row 13 on the chart and it is moved over to start two stitches to the left of the ones above and below, and it juts out two stitches on the other end too. See? For the life of me I couldn't figure out what that meant and there wasn't one word about it anywhere in the directions. I texted a knitting friend and she was just as befuddled as I was (thank god) so I slipped the "missing" stitches to the previous needle, knitted across, and realized that what happened was that the designer slapped a cable cross over the repeat begin/end line. A warning or hint about it would have been nice. (watch, I'll go back and read the pattern closely and there it'll be, then I'll wham my head on the coffee table a few times before picking up the needles again)
This morning while doing yoga in the living room (Durwood was breakfasting and I didn't think he wanted to watch my contortions) I caught sight of our stack of underwater DVDs. See, this cable hat is hard to knit and watch TV with and, worse, friends of ours are leaving soon for 2 weeks in Bonaire (our all-time favorite island) and we are...not, so I'm dreaming of warm, clear saltwater and pretty colored fish. In addition, in our small house it's hard to watch two different TV shows since the TVs are so close together and neither TV has a headphone jack. So I usually end up knitting at the kitchen table while watching/listening to whatever Durwood's watching or sitting on the couch with an audiobook plugged into one ear, but right now I don't have a book that's consuming my interest and my attention needs to be on how and where I'm cabling so that stack of the DVD version of instrumental music is perfect. Most of them have no talking, just pretty fish and underwater sounds, like having the world's best aquarium to keep me company while I knit. Ahhh.November 29--Nancy Moran. Her hand was so small she held only his first two fingers. Dolly skipped beside Daddy as they crossed the parking lot. They were going to the beach. Dolly liked to play in the sand, using her bucket to carry water from the lake to pour in the sand so she could build things with it. This was the beach with the squeaky sand too. She liked to watch grownups when they first stepped on it. They would look around to see if anyone had noticed, almost embarrassed like they had farted.
I keep thinking if I keep corn cobs in the feeders by the fence the squirrels will stay out of the peanuts long enough for the birds to get some. That's wrong thinking, no self-respecting squirrel is going to stay away from the peanuts but I like watching their acrobatics, especially hanging from their hind feet while nibbling on a corn kernel. Time to go knit and watch fishies--after a cheese sandwich and some carrots for lunch.--Barbara
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