Friday, November 04, 2005

Knitting and keeping busy

Knitting with others is awesome! Who knew? Lots of people, I know, but I just haven't been one of them. I went to my first knitting get together, "Stitch 'n Bitch", meetup ...or whatever you call it, on Wednesday. I met some fellow knitters and learned some great stuff and just enjoyed sitting, knitting, and chatting.

I was working on Liv but put it aside for two reasons: 1) I goofed and forgot to start increasing and 2) I started working on a gift for someone

#1 was easily remedied by a wonderful knitter at the meetup Wednesday night. I was two or three rows beyond where I was supposed to increase and rather than rip it back I was going to just increase too late and make up for it by increasing 7 rows later instead of 10. Well, Mary showed me how to go back to the row I was supposed to increase in, pick up a stitch and carry it up through the rows. Perfect! Plus, I was listening (imagine that!) when she mentioned that you have to carry the stitch through the rows correctly depending on whether it's a knit or a purl row. Well, good thing I was listening. Later on, while working on the gift I'm making, I found that I'd goofed up my seed stitch on the previous row. Just a small section at the end of the row where I put two knits together instead of a knit and a purl, so about 10 stitches were off pattern. Now I'm knitting something with 180 stitches per row. I was not going to undo nearly 360 stitches. I stopped and thought: can I take a knit stitch off and make it into a purl and vice versa? Yes! Happy dance. Problem fixed.

#2 reason for not knitting Liv is the 180 stitches per row gift I'm making. It's going to take a while to finish it but thankfully it's just seed stitch and if I goof up again I know how to fix it!

My husband asked if I'm into knitting more right now than sewing. Sort of. It's interesting that this time last year I dropped my sewing for knitting. It could be because winter is approaching and it's nice to curl up on the couch with some fiber. Although it doesn't get below freezing here in Northern California for more than a day or two, it does get chilly. We hit a low of 43 the other night! Brrr! :-) I still have a lot of sewing projects to do and somehow I'll fit them in around knitting. But with the high price of natural gas, the choice between sitting at my sewing machine in a fairly chilly room vs. sitting under a blanket on the couch will be fairly obvious, don't you think?

So my busy weekend is about to begin. Trunk show tonight. All-day seminar tomorrow. Sewing get together on Sunday. Whew!

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