It's been ages since I posted about knitting. It is not a coincidence that my last knitting post was two days before the election. In the upper right corner of the first picture that accompanies that post, there is a strange sort of wrap thing. It still looks to me like an insectoid robot, even though it is a much bigger insectoid robot these days. Behold:
I have been cruising along on it this week because it is fun to knit, and recklessly disregarding its increasingly unwearable nature. I mean, really: unless I am going to a masquerade ball that directs me to dress up as a blue-green robot insect, or swathing myself in wool in my own home where fashion standards are low low low, what am I going to do with that thing?
This unfortunate truth did not hit me until I brought down an extra size 5 needle and spread it out in all its hugeness across the back of the couch. (What is up with those weird pointy bits at the edges of the solid-colored stripes?) I was, in fact, so driven by the fun-to-knit factor that I was cranking along thinking about making the largest of the three sizes*, which would require two additional bands at the top. I couldn't find my other ball of dark green yarn, though. It wasn't in any of my knitting bags. It wasn't in the right box of unused yarn, and it wasn't in any of the wrong boxes either.
Over Christmas one of my boys lost a hobby supply item he'd just been given. He scoured the house, he dug through the trash -- nothing. I thought he'd sympathize with me about the frustrations of losing a particular hobby supply item even when an outsider might say that you appeared to have plenty of hobby supply items. He cocked an eyebrow and said drily, "Perhaps you can use it as an opportunity to cultivate detachment? Maybe offer it up for the souls in purgatory?" Ouch!
So the missing yarn was annoyance #1. Annoyance #2 is that I'm having the very same problem I had with the 2012 Westknits MKAL: his yardage estimates are too skimpy. I am supposed to knit one more pale blue row in that top stripey section. It's about 8.5 feet of knitting, and I have about 22 feet of blue yarn. That's a game of yarn chicken I am destined to lose. I am also down to about 35 feet of the apple green yarn, despite the designer's assurance that I should be able to do another section with apple green stripes. What I am wondering now is whether I can pull off the specified I-cord bindoff with the yarn remaining to me. If I do two stripes of green and one of blue, the ratio will be about right. The only question is whether I would run out of yarn 300 stitches in.
That would really give me an opportunity to cultivate detachment.
*This is allegedly a small shawl! A small insectoid robot! Who is going to wear a large one of these? Maybe it would work for Cyborg Gregor Samsa.
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