Well hello blogland, I’ve missed you guys! It’s certainly been a while. I cannot believe it’s November already. Crazy. So much Christmas knitting to do!
Sad to say, there hasn’t been an awful lot of knitting action going on during bloggy absence. The odd row here and there on my cinema socks (currently up to the heel turn) has pretty much been the extent of it, but on Friday night I finally got round to caking up this skein of deliciousness,
and cast on for the Spiral Cowl. (Thanks for everyone’s comments regarding my cowl vs shawl post, they were all duly noted, and the cowl is definitely the way forward!)
I’ve made a couple of slight modifications already – I cast on fewer stitches and have abandoned the picot edge in favour of some nice squishy garter stitch. The pattern is delightfully simple, but since I’ve only been able to snatch the odd minute to knit a few rows at bedtime, progress has been a little slow. It also didn’t help that I had somewhat troublesome start with this pattern, despite it’s simplicity.
Firstly, I cast on using my preferred Old Norwegian/Twisted German cast on using both ends of the yarn ball. Joined to knit in the round, was careful not to twist, and carried on knitting. I was far too lazy to get out of my nice warm bed and snip one of the cast on ends. Mistake number 1.
Of course, when combined with knitting in the semi dark and watching a film whilst not being entirely awake, this was a recipe for disaster. Naturally I got my yarn in a big old tangle, twisted here and there, thought I’d freed it, felt very pleased with myself, and merrily carried on knitting. The next morning rolls around, and it’s very apparent that in all my twisting I’d managed to wrap the working end around the join several rows back. That’s probably as clear as mud, but the important thing is that it resulted in me having to tink back several rows, unravel the wrapped yarn, and reknit.
Then, I couldn’t decide how many rows to knit for the garter border. 6 looked too few, 8 would result in 4 garter ridges which just seemed wrong (I have a weird thing for odd numbers and borders) so I decided on 10. But when I’d finally knit 10, it seemed too much. Cue more tinking as I swallowed my weird odd-number-border tendencies and tinked back to 8 rows. Mistake number 2.
I finally thought everything was on track and started on the spiral pattern, only to discover that somehow, despite having counted, recounted and re-recounted my 120 cast on stitches, I’d managed to pick up another 2 along the way. Infuriating. And definitely Mistake number 3. I couldn’t be bothered to tink any more so I did a couple of sneaky triple decreases in place of some double decreases to vanish the pesky stitches away. Problem solved, and I’m hoping that it’s plain sailing from here on out.
And this is my plan for this evening…
The Boy is out at the Tyneside Cinema film quiz, so I have the night alone to knit and catch up with the new Murakami book. Bliss.
I’m not usually a fan of hardback books, they’re so cumbersome and a feel lot less cosy than paperbacks, but Haurki Murakami is one of my favourite authors and I’ve been dying to read this since it was published in Japanese in 2009. Plus the covers just looked beautiful. Besides, I’ll probably just end up getting the paperbacks eventually anyway, since all the rest of my Murakami books are paperback and I’m one of those strange people who likes to have matchy matchy things…
Despite having had this for a couple of weeks, I’m only up to chapter 2 so far, but I’m loving it. Definitely looking forward to getting through a bit more of it tonight.
In other news, I bought myself a new camera as a (very!) early birthday present, so excuse my while I adjust. I absolutely love it, but it’s a lot more complex than my old point and shoot so it’s taking some time to get used to everything. I’ve been lamenting the lack of daylight hours I’ve had to play with it, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it. It is far better than my old camera in low light conditions, so hopefully (especially with all these dark nights starting again) I’ll still be able to take some decent photos this winter. I’m off to Amsterdam tomorrow for a long weekend, so I’m really looking forward to lots of camera play!
