November 18, 2003

C'est looooooooooooong...

I'm very busy lately, but I've got lots of knitting progress to share! How about we start with my sister's poncho? The poncho has become my knitting in the evening project because other than increases at every row, knitting is just straight stockinette so I can keep my eyes on the t.v. while knitting.

The only thing is that it's getting slow. Increases are at nearly every row, so now I have more stitches on the needle than I can count and am obligated to use a long Addi Turbo needle that looks like a whip. Point protectors are a fun thing to have, but really...do we ever use them? I rarely do. But for the poncho I have to use point protectors whenever I put my work down in order to keep the stitches from falling off the needle. Yep, those endless increases are making the poncho start to go slooooooooowly. Now as I go work each row I am reminded of the scene from Como Agua Para Chocolate where Tita knits a blanket that goes for miles and miles. Next time I admire a shawl kit I'll remember the poncho and think of Tita.

I should also mention that my manner of knitting is different with the poncho. The yarn used for the poncho is Phil Ruban, a flat cotton yarn. When I swatched for the poncho I noticed that the knit stitches looked "thinner" than the purl stitches, so there was a marked difference between the knit rows and the purl rows even though my tension was even. This was happening because working the knit stitches from front to back was distorting the flat yarn, thus making my knit rows look "thin" in comparison to my purl rows. So I decided to work all my knit stitches through the back loop, and then untwist them on the wrong side by wrapping the yarn under my purl stitches. It worked! The knitting evened out and there's no difference between my knit rows and my purl rows.

I've got more to share but dinner's a-callin' and I've got some project organizing to do. This afternoon I was poking through the yarn stash in my closet and was surprised to find hidden treasures - 3 ziploc bags full of yarn for planned but forgotten projects. One of them was this lot of Phildar Legende and Phil Peluche to make this sweater for my kid [pattern is from last winter's Tricotez Calin - it's a back issue so it is no longer available at Phildar's site]. I was going to make the sweater last fall, but in my excitement over doing the tweedy jacket first the bag got shoved to the bottom of the stash pile and promptly forgotten. Oops! Finding it now felt strangely like discovering a forgotten 20 euro note in my jacket pocket.

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