Busy busy fingers

Well, I've been doing a little less knitting (other than for Eggs) over the last month, but that's mainly because I was creating a couple of knitting-related websites (revamped my original site for the Sonoma County Knitting Guild, and created a new one for the local Project Linus chapter), and doing a lot of ripping.

Ripping is different, to me at least, than unknitting. Unknitting (tinking, tink being knit spelled backwards) is unknitting each of the stitches along part or all of a row or so. My scarves get tinked a lot when I suddenly realized I messed up a YO or K2tog several stitches back or in the last row.

When ripping, however, you pull the needle out of the row of stitches, then pull the yarn, undoing all those stitches and the stitches for several (or more) rows below that. This is done when you have so totally screwed something up that the whole thing needs to be reworked. Like, this scarf I'm knitting.

This is the first mosaic (slip-stitch) scarf I've done, and I ripped several times before now because (1) I didn't like the feel of the fabric on size 8 needles; (2) I didn't like the feel of the fabric on size 11 needles; (3) I did like the feel of the fabric on size 13 needles, but (4) I didn't like the width of the fabric, so I ripped back to the beginning and cast on again, with more stitches.


I have done some slip-stitch knitting before, and striped knitting. For some reason, in this scarf, I forgot what I figured out in the slip-stitch blanket I made 8 years ago, and tried to carry the unused color up every other row in this scarf. Why I didn't notice what a mess this was making of the edge until 12:30 AM this morning, after knitting almost a foot of scarf last night, I don't know.


Dufus.. I even managed to not slip, but actually drop, the last stitch on a couple of those rows. So, tonight, I rip. Which brings up another knitting turn-of-word. If you swear and say "Rip it!" several times, it sounds rather like "ribbit", the sound associated with the utterances of some frogs, and so rip and ripping is called frog and frogging by many knitters.

One of my other projects is a warm hat for my nephew, Wyatt. Currently residing in the wild cold reaches of Missouri, he needs to keep his little head covered. Anticipating that he will still be living there next year or so, I added some room for growth. I hope. I pretty much suck at visualizing kid sizes.




This is going to be an inside-outside hat: two hats both emerging from their bottom edge (that would be the row of black and white seen on the right in the above photograph. The first hat was knit from the crown to the 'bottom' edge, (using a worsted weight white yarn and a red and white sock yarn, Then, I switched to the black and white sock yarn and another ball of the white worsted yarn and knit the second hat, knitting up to its crown, and finishing with a little I-cord loop:




The resulting fabric, when you stuff the black inside the red, or red inside the black, is thick but cushy, and warm, as the worsted yarn is wool. The black/white yarn is a mix of wool/cotton/nylon, while the red is cotton/nylon. All machine washable (gently, please).

The other thing I did was finally finish a pair of socks I'd been carrying around with me for what seems like ages.



I used to knit a pair of socks a week, then every two weeks, then a month, and then several months went by with no socks. Weirdly enough, I don't even have a pair of socks in progress at the moment, something I've had for the past couple of years.

I also got all the ends woven in on four blankets, three of which are going to Project Linus. The blankets have been sitting around here for a couple of years, I'm embarrassed to say, so for a number of reasons, I want them out of here and around the kids who will be getting them.

With these projects done (except the scarf about to be frogged to its roots), I had a bit of time over the past couple of weeks to do some knitting for Eggs In Hats. Keep in mind the sock above as you check out Eggs.