Bobble bobble

Bobbles are very hard on the hands.  Well, at least mine.  I finished the first piece of the Dolly Bag which has bobbles as a finished upper edge.  It took me some time to figure out the directions, but the result is worth it.  I’m sure there is a better way to complete the bobble, but I’m doing what works.  To give my hands a break I picked up some very soft acrylic to make a scarf with, I’m about 1/3 of the way done.  Then it will be back to bobbles.

Oh where does the time go?

OK, I’ll say it.  I’m not the best blogger as it has been several weeks since I last posted.  But I have been productive.  I finally finished the braided cable hat in burgundy AND finished the original gray one. 

Then I started a Rowen’s Dolly Bag.  I had to teach myself how to make bobbles.  It’s coming along well, but slowly.  I’m about 2/3 of the way done with the first side.

On another note, the knitting club at school was so successful that we added a second session – which keeps growing by the day.  The girls are doing surprisingly well and we actually had our first finished scarf this week.

Teaching

I thought I’d post something completely different.  We started our knitting club yesterday.  Over the next four weeks five crazed teachers will try to teach a group of fourth and fifth graders how to knit.  We collected a bunch of donated yarn and bought some needles.  We decided not to teach them how to cast on, just yet.  We thought they would be more interested in the actually knitting.  After all watching their piece grow is the initial fun.  Might I just say the whole experience was rewarding and very, very interesting.  It was fun to watch how each student held their needles, some were knitting soooo tight and some were soooo loose.  I can’t wait to see what they bring us back next week!

Cable v7

Can you believe it…as mentioned, I ripped out v5 and decided that perhaps I needed a change.  So I switched from the gray yarn to the burgundy (thinking perhaps that would help).  For some reason, my casting on was really wonky so I ripped out several attempts (I didn’t count these as real versions).  Then I messed up again…ripped and started v7.  You’ll notice I don’t give up easily.  Well, imagine my surprise when I got the cable stitch and realized I had been doing it all wrong.  After slipping the stitches off and k2, I was to slip the purl stitches back to the left needle, purl those two, knit the two on the cable needle before continuing on with the pattern of p2.  It makes all the difference.  Go figure!

Cable v5

Guess what? No really, guess.  Ding, ding, ding, ding…yes I messed up on the cable – yet again.  After ripping out version four I began again.  No problems with the ribbing so I moved on.  I carefully wrote out the cable stitches and concentrated on making sure I made each stitch and I held the cables to the correct side.  All went well and I had a nicely done row of cables.  Knitted four more rows of K2 P2 and it was cables again.  I completed four rows of cabling with the proper K2 P2 in between.  So, what’s my problem?  Not sure, but the cables wrong.  It looks nothing like the picture.  My guess is that at some point I must have moved stitches from one set of needles to another which then threw off where the cable stitches came it at, but what should have been a twisted cable is not.  So…..rippppp! On to version 6.

Urggggg!

That’s how I feel, frustrated.  I’m going nuts with this stupid hat project.  As I mentioned the ribbing turned out a bit odd, with the strange wide stitch problem, but I was moving on.  I mean, I really didn’t want to start over AGAIN.  But as fate would have it, I can’t seem to get the cable right.  I carefully work it out on paper, I understand what I’m supposed to do, but somehow I mess something up.  First I was not consistently holding the cables to the correct side, then I forgot to P2 between cable patterns, and finally I just ended up with too many extra stitches for some unknown reason.  Urgggg!  You guessed it, I ripped it apart.  I decided that I’ll practice (just the cabling) with some yarn scraps before attempting to re-start the hat.  I will do this!  (it will just take some patience)

Can U cable?

I’m trying to teach myself.  So I found a “simple” hat project from SweaterBabe.com that states that it is “an impressive gift that you can crank out quickly.”  Yeah right, perhaps for someone else.  I’m on my fourth try already.  I’m not at all happy with the ribbing (I think my ribbing on version two and three was much better), for some reason the stitches between needles is wide.  I’ve never encountered this before and I’m not sure what I did differently.  On my first version I used the wrong weight yarn, second and third versions I had new yarn, but messed up the start of the cable so badly I needed to rip it out and in doing so made such a mess I just kept going and started anew.  I’ll be starting the cables tomorrow.  I can’t really knit while crossing my fingers so I’ll have to pray instead.

The scarf that never ends…

Has finally ended!  Thank God!  I felt like I was knitting forever on that silly thing.  it is still curled and looks like a tubular scarf with ruffled edges, but I’ll try to block it out today and see what happens.  Regardless of the results, its kind of cute when wrapped a couple of times.  Don’t think I’d make another given how long it took and I have so many other projects awaiting attention.  But bottom line…not bad.

The concept of length

I’ve always known I’m a terrible judge of distance, but now I really know.  My yellow ruffled edge scarf is progressing, slowly!  I previously thought I’d made it half way.  But I’ve been told by my daughter that it’s  not even close to being half way.  I guess it’s the type of scarf that needs lots of length in order to loop around a couple of times.  I only hope I can take care of the curled edges.  It will be very cute if it lies flat.  Perhaps I’ll have to make my first attempt at blocking.  If I ever get back to the knitting group, I’ll have a couple of people to ask.  But that’s another story….

Ruffles on a scarf

After my frustrated bout with trying something new, I finished up the dish clothes and was still itching to do something different.  So I did a bit of research on the web, found a new pattern and took up my needles and the yellow yarn (that was bought for the purse, but was the wrong weight).  I wanted to teach myself how to knit a ruffle on the end of the scarf.  I tried following the pattern, several times in fact, but it wasn’t really working out for what I had in mind.  After a few attempts, I bagged the pattern and went with my own version.  My only question now, why does it have to curl at the edges?  I’m only about half way done with the length, my arthritis is acting up, so its slow but steady knitting.