Monday, June 27, 2005

Cou-qi! Cou-qi!

I'm assured that cou-qi is the noise that some Bermudan frogs make. It was the noise I was making this weekend.

Before I go any farther, Happy Birthday Dan! :) We love you! (It was Saturday. He's my SO, my friend, my hubby, and my resident Cancer. Life is good. ;)

Anyhoo, I came to the end of my yarn on the Ruby Slipper shawl before I finished the knit-on, garter stitch lace edging. (This is what the pattern calls for instead of a bind-off.) Arrg. Halfway around the circle, I had noticed that I was doing the edging a mite wrong - I'd added an internal repeat, so I got a kinda-cool ladder effect. However, this had the drawback of using more yarn on the now-wider edging and thus I ran out about fifty stitches away from the end of the bind-off. Arrg. I'd already bought more yarn once, and I didn't want to do it again.

I was so mad! However, I was dubious about the ladder edge anyway and stressed about the In Law Visit, so I threaded a smaller circ through all of soon-to-be unbound-off stitches, hooked the end of the yarn to my ball winder, and ripped out the whole edging, chanting to myself: Rip it! Rip it good! Crack that rip!

It unravelled with a minimum of fuss. I'm so good. Now I've figured out a much narrower garter lace edging that is still the minimum of 8 stitches wide. Back to going around the circle, but since the edge is narrower hopefully it will go quicker this time. I love the shawl even if people keep complimenting me on my tablecloth... I was wearing the shawl with the circular in it while I was in Nantucket, since most of the circle was free - and am looking forward to its finish. It was very nice on a suddenly-cool summer evening. :) Now if only the circs weren't poking me in the neck like some wierd halter. ;)

I swear, I will finish this thing... it won't be the Project that Will Not Die.

I've started swatching the Tile sweater, but as it's gauge-over-pattern, it's going a little bit slowly. The plus side is that I've figured out cabling without a needle and that I'll have lots of preshrunk yarn to sew the bastard darling together. :) Okay, off to be productive.

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