I finished the scarf! Only thing I have to do is block it... problem is, I don't have pins and I'm not wholly sure I have space here to do it. (Come to think of it, I'm certainly lacking something to help make sure that I block the edges straight.) It may languish till spring break.
With the scarf finished, I've started work on Tasha. I actually had quite an adventure when I was preparing to knit my swatch. Scroll down a bit and take a look at the picture I uploaded of the 5 skeins of yarn for this project. I thought that they really were skeins, all ready to knit from, but I planned to roll them into balls anyway.
Turns out they're hanks. Not only are they hanks, they're folded in quarters, and the manufacturer didn't leave any scrap yarn tied around them at any point to ensure they stayed untangle.
Need I say that my first attempt to deal with one of these was a disaster?
To make things worse, I started doing it in the car on the way to visit my great-aunt and great-uncle, who live about 2 hours away. Maybe 5 minutes in, I tore the paper wrapping away. One "oops," and then another, quickly followed... and I spent the entire ride trying to untangle the mess, mostly working on a single knot and not getting more than a tenth of the way through. I was literally crying by the time we got to our destination. It was miserable. Of course, that meant that my mom and dad confiscated the yarn and proceeded to work on it themselves to spare me further trouble. Which was probably actually a good thing, for a while. We finally got it all untangled, balled up, and set to go about halfway through the visit, at which point I started in on the swatch I'd planned on being nearly done with by the end of the day.
The next time I had to wind a ball, I was much, much more careful. And wonderfully enough, it went just fine. Even though I did it on an airplane, with a wall on one side and a guy on the other. And I didn't even bang him with my elbow that much!
The swatch is done, but not washed (this yarn may shrink with washing, so I have to do that), and I've started in on the bag itself. I chose to begin with the sides because a) washed gauge/shrinkage doesn't matter too much with these (all other pieces can be knit to fit whatever size they come out); b) other than the strap, they're probably going to use up the most yarn, so I want to start with full balls for them; and c) I was apparently feeling masochistic (two 9.5" squares of plain stockinette, anyone?). I am knitting both sides at once on a single circular needle because I don't trust my gauge to stay consistent. That means dealing with two balls of yarn at once -- a bit of a pain, but I quickly learned to rubber-band them so that they don't go unravelling and rolling around, and I manage all right.
Here's a picture of how the sides look so far:
They are about 2 1/2" long. No clue how many rows I've done; I haven't been keeping track, since these are to be knit to length.
I don't know how quickly the bag is going to progress, since I don't think I'll have much knitting time this quarter. I don't have lecture classes, and I'm not sure if knitting group will meet (no one's written me back yet) so it might just be an hour or so per week at my Dickens reading group, plus a little down time (ha ha ha) here and there. We'll see.
In other news, my grandma sent me yarn! With the promise of more to come, if I've started knitting with wool and like it (what she sent me was mostly acrylic or acrylic/wool blends). She's so funny. When she saw me knitting once, she got a huge kick out of it. The scarf I finished is going to her when it's blocked.
...anything else? Naw, I think that's it. Expect short posts for the next few months, barring some huge disaster... I have seven more inches of stockinette, and I don't think it's going to fly by.
2 comments:
The best way to control a ball of yarn is to wrap it to pull from the inside out. It is easy to do. Take one yarn end and string it along the left index finger holding it in place with the left thumb. Start to wrap around the tip of the index finger avoid wrappng over the end until you have a soft ball. Gently remove the yarn from your finger and continue wrapping always avoiding the end sticking out of the ball of yarn. Wrapping yarn from the inside out is a good way to control the yarn ball from rolling all over the floor and getting dirty. Just remember to wrap loosely. I have been doing this for 40 plus years and it works well.
Hope this helps you to get rid of the rubber bands.
Hugs,
Diane
Yeah, I know how to wind a center-pull ball (I actually wound these using instructions for a center-pull), but I really find it irritating to have to constantly worry about not wrapping over the end. We'll see if the rolly-ness of the balls gets sufficiently annoying for me to think it's worth the bother of winding a center-pull ball correctly. ;)
I'm always so amazed that someone reads this! Thanks for the comment. :)
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