Knitting Dragonflies

I recently finished a sweater that had been in my knitting bag for 5 years. Whew, well it is only fitting that I frogged the ribbing around the bottom and reknit it. Good news is it only took me a day, now it was most of the day, and now I love it. The first ribbing was a k1, p1 and it was wavy and not tight enough. I was going to frog it and reknit in a tighter gauge (smaller needle size) but after I got it ripped back I thought, “what the heck!, I’m going to do a folded hem”, which I’ve never knitted. This is the after pic, notice the hem is flat! Yay! You can see the k1 p1 ribbing on the bottom was curling up. I had cast off with a knitted cast off. So I had to Cut part of the very edge off to unravel it. Then I reknit it in stockinette stitch with one purl row all around to make it fold over on itself and then tacked it down! Yay! Smooth, nice hem now. Type of ribbing and hems Ribbing I used to think all ribbing was created equal! Not so! Ribbing in knitting is a combo o...

I’m still slogging along with my Iced sweater from Knitty . After an alarming number of frogs and ciphering, I am cautiously on a roll. Yes you would think with yarn this bulky, that this sweater would be done in a week. Me too! I started with this lovely yarn that I purchased for another pattern, sound familiar? How many times do I do this? It laid around and mocked me for some time. I just wasn’t happy with the pattern that I originally bought for it. Of course the yarn being rather super bulky, it was hard to find another pattern to fit my needs. Enter Knitty Fall 2010 Iced Sweater by Carol Feller . I feel in love with it and had to have it. Well,,,,,,I didn’t want to buy more yarn, so I decided I would “force” this yarn into behaving itself began and perilous journey. Getting Gauge: not going to happen, the knitting gods laughed at me…Frogged Getting Gauge second try: still laughing, and do I detect some snorting?….Frogged Begin knitting, I’m blindly knitting along, tightly ...

Everyone who knits frogs, why do you? I tend to frog when I don’t think the yarn, needles or pattern are not working to my satisfaction. Not when I’ve made an error. I like to think I creatively incorporate my errors into my patterns. I like to let mistakes lie for a bit, let your knitting sit overnight, often in the middle of the night, or during a dog walk, I can come up with a improvisation to allow me to continue. If the error is not obvious to anyone but me, I often let it go. Can I make it into part of the pattern, add some design, or shaping? Or just outright ignoring it, especially if in an underarm or other inconspicuous area. I even found a dropped stitch once that I couldn’t ladder back up and tacked it down. I also take into account how far along I am, if not far, well I’ll rip it out, almost done. Start thinking creatively. Of course if you are going to “see” the mistake every time you look at your item. Definitely rip it out and fix the problem we must be at p...

Here is the yarn that I frogged from the cursed Pyramid Sweater, with a different color each row it was a trial. I may try the pattern again with different yarn. I love the Ruana that is on the Panopticon blog , beautiful. But I don't think I have enough to make it, Hummm. that would involve another forray to the yarn store. Keep your needles close...