Having made noises about buying more of the styk stitch markers when they are ready come october, I found I will need markers before then. So I went out and bought some and they were UGLY. Not content to use ugly markers for a beautiful task I got busy and made my own.

For the price of about 4 of the styck markers (shown on its own at the top of the photo) I have made 12 of my own and have enough bits and pieces left over to make a gazillion more. Now that I know I can do it I will be on the look out for some truly beautiful beads…

Ever so carefully I typed the instructions for my next project into googles language tools and this is what it returned:

“Be 29 cm total height, to form encolure. in folding back the 6 meshs, power station then to continue, a side at the same time to fold back of it side encolure 2 row plus height 7 meshs”

I don’t intend to knit this jacket at the local power station so I am looking elsewhere for translation assistance at this time. Alison was kind enough to send me these very helpful links for translating knitting terms:

Wise Needle and a french knitting dictionary

We are having manacotti for dinner tonight. Making manacotti involves a vast number of pancakes and a great deal of standing around waiting to flip those pancakes. The thing with pancakes is you can’t really leave them alone to do something else but really it’s pretty dull standing there watching them brown.

Can you hear the sounds of “One of these things is not like the others”? Hum it to yourself.

Why it’s a plaited drawstring for the nappy cover.

As I have mentioned I taught myself to knit in order to make a nighttime nappy cover for Isabelle. I had no one to teach me so I googled “knitting video”, possibly with some extra words in there too (this did happen 6 months or so ago) and blessed be the google gods, I found just what I needed. To be honest I found learning to knit from video pretty easy and off I went. I knit my nappy cover with stripes because I thought it would look better and also because it helped me count the rows (I had no idea you could get row counters).

All was well until I got to the finishing. The pattern suggeted i corchet on a shell edging. No instructions were forthcoming as to how to achieve this shell edging so I googled some more. I found more videos and frankly I was terrified. I had already given up the idea of actually using this cover by the time I finished it so I put it aside and got on with moving states (did I mention we did this twice in two weeks - there and back again?).

Now that I am knitting again the thought of an unfinished project has been bothering me. Having realised I must do at least a little crochet in order to knit the projects I want to it seemed only fitting that I learn to crochet in order to complete the project for which I learned to knit. Remembering the horror of those crochet videos I tried getting a book from the library and it worked! I can now crochet, at least a little. I stil have a horrible time trying to learn knitting techniques from photos or diagrams, I definitely prefer video but for crochet this book rocks!

The good news is my big bad baby blanket is officially off the needles. The bad news is that weaving the ends is NOT going well. The purple ends disappeared into the moss stitch nicely but all the ends that need to go into the body I simply cannot make disappear. I feel depressed. I have consulted all the books I own (not that many) and none of their suggestions work for something where the “back” is going to be seen. I don’t know what to do next.

We went to town today. Those of you with toddlers will understand why not going has been easy despite the ever growing list of things that would be best achieved in a major shopping area. My impending moss stitch casting off experience is what made me stop procrastinating and do it. I decided I needed a more in-depth knitting book badly enough to go to town and do all the other things I needed to do too.

So I printed off my amazon wish list and off we went. I sent Jesse to the aquarium with Isabelle while I did the stuff only I needed to be present for and I did well:

Book in hand, I went and bought some rust proof pins, a needle gauge, a pair of “knitters needles” and a new purse (for half the price I had budgetted no less). After such a happy retail experience I was feeling so good I recklessly strayed into the ladies underwear section of a major department store and that was the end of my shopping success story. When I departed an hour later with no further purchases, I was significantly less happy than I went in, close to tears in fact. At least I got the book and despite the outrageous amount of time I wasted trying to get a new bra (or three) Jesse still managed to get himself one new shirt too. The rest of the clothes shopping will have to wait for another day.

So by now you may be wondering what all this has to do with knitting tools… I did buy the needle gauge, pins and knitters needle today, and yesterday I got these in the post (shown with todays purchases for good measure):

All the needles I need for Isabelle’s Jacket with Moss Stitch Bands, the Phildar Jacket and Reverse Bloom Washcloths. There were supposed to be needles for Kate too but they somehow didn’t make it into the packet. To add to my parcel opening excitement Janette from Styk included this lovely little stitch holder sample.

I know, I know, its all a ploy to make me spend more money - well it’s working. I expect I will order 3 more when they are available in mid october.

She was walking down the hall. Slowly. And she was saying “sorry”, “sorry”, “sorry” in a small, sad little voice. She didn’t look at me as she handed me what she was carrying and when I saw what was in her hands I cried.

Call me compulsive but I was unable to sit and knit while the construction of the blog about the knitting I have not been doing was incomplete. This is probably why I am destined to be a one-big-project-at-a-time knitter. I have to resolve things RIGHT NOW. Especially code problems. I can’t sleep with code dancing in my head. The last few days have been a raging war between my old career as a web developer and my new passion for knitting. The blog may have won the first few battles but I would say that knitting has won the war because I am off to knit…. The final section of the site, the gallery, is now working - so now I must knit something to put in it. I have absolutely no plans to do anything more to the site anytime soon… except perhaps design a better header one day…

My big bad baby blanket is nearly done so I should have something for the gallery soon!

So how did I fix it? I ripped it out! But only the edges. And I left the intarsia intact.

Then I grabbed me some straights and started carefully knitting back up the side

As you can imagine I was maniacly measuring every few rows to make sure I was maintaining a steady gauge. I was NOT going to repeat this process - other than for the second side that is; because now they don’t match.

So I repeated the above process for the other side and ta-da: