the good, bad, and ugly...

The good:

• One animal for Abby's lovely Zoo-Along - DONE!


• Swatch for Eyelet Cardi at (gulp) 5.5/st. inch... MOSTLY done


• Salt Peanuts swatch - DONE!


• Salt Peanuts Back lace pattern - MOSTLY done


• I got to have dinner with one of my oldest and best friends who just happened to be in the neighborhood (which considering that I am in Maryland, and he lives in Oregon, was pretty damn cool).

The bad:

• The Eyelet Cardi swatch appears to be a consistant 5.625 st/in. and I am sure this will add up unflatteringly... so the cardi is on hold pending a trip to Ye Olde LYS for another set of AddiTs. If I am going to cripple my hands, they will go holding the finest knitting engineering available.


• The Salt Peanuts lace took 3 tries on one row and 2 tries on another to get the yarn overs right. Turns out I have been doing the wrong yo before a knit forever. My whole afghan... I thought the lack of prominence of the yos was due to my inexperience... but NO! It was due to INCORRECT instructions in one of my books. I was all ready to post a big complaint about the IK directions not being clear, but everywhere else I looked gave correct yo instructions. Just not the one book I use as a regular reference. [sigh] The book in question is the The Yarn Girl's Guide to Simple Knits (which has otherwise been a good book, and helped me through my first adult sweater) and the instructions they give for a YO before a K seem to be the same instructions that www.stitchguide.com gives for a M1 with Backward Loop. Essentially, the wrap they illustrate is twisted, so that the purl on the next row closes up the hole in all but the loosest of knitting. I kept frogging the row and doing it over, thinking that I was making a mistake when I had no holes...


• My gauge for Salt Peanuts is right on width-wise... but as you can likely tell in the pic below, it is WAY off heighth wise for the lace pattern (it is just barely a half a row short in st stitch). My plan is to make up for this in the body, it is only a half inch or so. If by any chance, anyone has made it this far and can help me with this new quandry: How do I control the height of my stitches without affecting their width? I already know that if I go down a needle size it puts my spi off.


• The yo issue is also why the eyelets on my eyelet cardi look more like mistakes than eyelets.

{finally, holes on the right and left...}
The ugly:
I have two TVs. In the last two weeks, both... that's right folks BOTH have died. The first has been at the shop pending a repair estimate. The second died peacefully on Friday, right after BD and I opened a new account at Hollyweird Video and rented 3 cool movies. So, I have no movie reviews for you today.