Un-knitting has never been my style. My I like to pull out the needle, rip to my hearts content and pick up what’s left with a smaller needle. This is not an approach that works with Carla, a fact that I have twice now proven by dropping a stitch while trying to un-knit. One measly dropped stitch. Dropped only one row. Who would have though this could be a half hour problem requiring tea, chocolate and a great deal of mumbling under the breath? I guess I will finish the sleeve some time this century…

Carla is coming along nicely, very nicely. I cast on the first sleeve the other day using the larger needle size that I used for the second body piece and decided it was too loose. So last night I tried again with the smaller size called for in the pattern and it was just right… I am now a bit over halfway through the sleeve and already thinking about my next project.

Winter is coming, in fact winter has popped in for an early visit. I have to knit Isabelle some warm things and I need to do it FAST. I am tossing up between knitting the Debbie Bliss Jacket with Moss Stitch Bands that I have yarn for in my stash and getting yarn for a poncho. I plan to make both for her this winter, the trick is to figure out which order of presentation is most likely to ensure that both get worn.

I need a couple of new sweaters this year too, or at least that is my excuse. I bought myself a gorgeous new sweater today, from my favourite store, Jigsaw. Its a black cotton/acrylic mock turtle neck with a cabled front and 2*2 rib back and sleeves. The yarn seems quite similar to Rowan All Season Cotton, the fit is great, it is so warm and I am positively gloating over buying it at about 25% the normal price. In fact this purchase just about made my day.

Finally, my mum is visiting and she brought with her two books from my grandmother, “Knitting Workshop” by Elizabeth Zimmerman and “The Woolgatherers’ Handspun Pattern Book”. I had been asking my gran about the shawls she knit for Isabelle, they are both here and then some.

Sorry for the fractured post, my mothers visit and the crazy weather have me off balance, though not so much that I have stopped knitting!

This is where I was up to yesterday, or perhaps it was the day before, I am not sure any more. As of this afternoon I am halfway through the raglan shaping of the second body piece. And so far the two pieces match. It’s a simple thing, but it makes me happy. Thinking ahead I am trying to decide whether to make the sleeves one at a time or both at once. The other question on my mind is how long those sleeves should be, full length? 3/4? Bracelet? The first question is obviously more pressing at the moment. I suspect I may opt to do them one at a time. I think for this sweater doing both at once will actually be more frustrating than doing them one at at time will be boring.

While it may not be exactly true that the second front/back of Carla is exactly like the last one at this stage, the photos certainly would show it that way, which is my excuse for not taking one. What the photo would not show so clearly is that the ribbing seems to be a much more reasonable width knit on the same (larger) needles as the rest of the sweater. This time I also cast on holding a 5mm crochet hook together with the 9mm knitting needle and it was very satisfying to watch what happened when I had finished the ribbing and stretched it out to see how far it would go and how stretchy the cast on was. It was the first time I had actually paid attention the process of the big loops from casting on over two needles being pulled tighter and the gaps between them expanding to give a nice even edge. Having achieved better ribbing for the second piece the question is will I leave the ribbing of the first piece as is or will I do this?

Something great came in the post yesterday, and it wasn’t yarn. Today we picked Jesse up from work at lunchtime to go down to the beach and try it out.

Last night I made it to the 37cms required to start the raglan shaping, actually I knit 40cms to make it the same length as my favourite sweater. But instead of starting the decreases I spent over an hour desperately trying to make sense of how to cast off three stitches at either end and still maintain a 2 stitch pattern. I had just about given up in disgust and decided to cast off only two stitches, allowing me to maintain the pattern but leaving me with two extra stitches when I found some excellent advice here. I am going to follow C’s method in the very last comment. In fact as you can see on the right I have already started following her advice.

So far, so good, though I did have one horrible moment at the end of the second cast off row. As I knit back to where the first stitches had been cast off I found that I had exactly the right number of stitches to knit the pattern as normal (ie either one too many or one too few). After having a quiet little hissy fit in the clinic waiting room (I was waiting to be called for my morning bloodwork, yes I do have trackmarks, it’s one of the many charming things about fertility treatment), I realised that the decreases were fine, I had just dropped a stitch a few stitches after the first cast off. Thankfully I only had to unknit a little to get back to the problem, which was easily fixed.

In other news my neighbours are currently awaiting the birth of their first grandchild so I went yarn shopping today. I came home with fabric. I couldn’t really afford the yarn I wanted from my LYS, which I suspect would not have been appreciated anyway (I am sure the knitting would have been appreciated but my feeling is they would actually prefer acrylic to wool), and the yarn at the craftstore was more nasty than cheap. Instead I bought some gorgeous green and purple velour cord to make a super simple quilted blankie. I have two more babies to make gifts for this year whose parents WILL appreciate nice yarn so I will save my knitting for them.

Perhaps tomorrow, when I have actually knit enough of the body. At least I thought to double check the pattern before casting off the underarm stitches and starting the decreases.

Who would have thought it? I have made actual progress. I have half a front and I am about to start those tricky double decreases for the raglan shaping.

I do have some concerns about gauge. I reknit the ribbing thinking those loose thoughts and it still seems rather small. However, I seem to have gauge on the lace pattern when stretched out just enough to actually show the stitches off properly. So for now I am knitting and praying.

Wendy is planning to knit herself Deli from Rowan Classic Cafe. I am smitten. I have had my eye out for something like this for a while now. If this IUI works and we don’t have to save all our pennies for the next treatment I see myself ordering some yarn from the UK one day very soon.

Yep, that is the remains of my first start on Carla sitting next to the remains of my swatch. And those twins are about to become triplets. I am on a roll.

It was quite fun knitting Carla in the round and I was a bit sad to give up on it, but there were a few problems. Firstly I found it really hard to make nice increases on this pattern stitch and even harder to back track and fix any mistakes. Perhaps a more experienced knitter could have worked this out, perhaps it was never going to work. At this point I just want to sit and knit until I have a sweater to wear. We have had great weather for Carla this week, it’s very motivating.

Back to the problems, the increases were “too hard”, I also had issues with sloppy stitches on one side of each sleeve (between the stockinette and the pattern stitch), this was mostly caused by the increases, so maybe it’s all part of the one issue. The killer issue was how to maintain the pattern stitch in the round. It was all fine until you had to go from an R2 repeat to an R1 repeat and suddenly you have a yarn back followed directly by a yarn forward and what does that make folks? A great big hole.

On the left we have one of the good joins between pattern stitch and stockinette, on the right is where it all went terribly wrong.

I have to say that despite all the effort I put into figuring out how to knit Carla in the round I was really in quite good spirits when I ripped my first attempt out and started again as per the original pattern. As I said earlier I just want to knit this thing, it’s fun and it’s so easy to knit I feel like the end is in sight already (now watch THAT come back and bite me). I cast on the front, knit the ribbing and a couple of the inches of the pattern and then I sat back to survey my work and it was SMALL. Let me say it again SMALL. As in, would fit a 12 yr old nicely, a SMALL 12 yr old. The pattern stitch might be fine but the rib is tiny. So as I said earlier, those twins, they are about to become triplets….

The question is, do I reknit on the same needles and just think loose thoughts, do I knit the rib on the same needle size as the pattern stitch (possibly also thinking loose thoughts) or do I knit the rib on the 13s and get some bigger needles for the pattern? Just how tight a knitter am I and what exactly has gone wrong here? I wish that patterns would give tension for the rib as well as the main stitch pattern.

Speaking of loose thoughts I am off to have an IUI this morning. Is it just me or is there something distinctly weird about trying to get pregnant with significantly more people than just you and your husband in the room? While I had always expected that explaining “how babies are made” to a toddler would be awkward, this was not the kind of awkward I had in mind.