Thursday 10 May 2007

More Grey Stuff

Well, Betty has a back and a bit of a left front. The fabric created by increasing in every stitch on the right side, then decreasing while ribbing on the wrong side has biased alarmingly to one side. To the extent that the armholes, although both the same length in rows, appear to be squint. I'm hoping like mad that it will all straighten up in the blocking.


I've left the shoulder stitches on holders so that I can do a three needle bind off instead of seaming, and I've left the neck stitches on holders so that I can knit the collar. The pattern recommends binding off, then picking up the same number of stitches again which I don't think will give such a smooth finish, so as usual I've played with the pattern a bit!

No other progress to report on. I've not got round to winding yarn and stringing beads before casting on Tendrils and I've actually got very little knitting done lately (too much tennis and gardening getting in the way). Two of my friends are re-discovering knitting (with a little help from me) at the moment. They are both surgeons and it is an absolute joy to teach people with such superb spacial awareness and manual dexterity. Within a week, they had compared and contrasted the British style with the German and Portuguese styles of knitting and developed preferences. Now they're asking about concepts that hadn't even occurred to me existed until I'd been knitting regularly for about 6 months. It's going to be interesting watching them - if they're trying cables 10 days after picking up the needles (after already mastering knit, purl, seed stitch, double seed stitch, rib and twisted rib, as well as increases and decreases etc), I can't imagine where they'll be after a few months!

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