Tuesday, February 12, 2008

I feel like a knitting idiot.

I have been working on the same "simple" pattern for three days now. It's a simple lace scarf. It should be simple. Everyone else says it's simple. I understand the stitches.

And yet I can't get the freaking thing to work correctly. Somehow everytime the stitches end up screwed up. Sometimes I have too many. Sometimes too few. And based off my understanding of math (given, I only really understand calculus, comprehension of arithmatic still eludes me) these things should not be happening. I have plotted the stitches out. I have drawn pictures. I think i know how this thing should work, but apparently I don't, because it never looks like the picture.

I have knitted and unknitted this project 4 times in fluffy MOHAIR. If you are familiar with this, you know its a bitch to do. I then decided to practice on my wool yarn - and I have knitted and frogged that piece 3 times.

I'd like to get this piece done by March. It shouldn't take that long. I may have to have someone else look at it and tell me if I'm either doing it wrong or doing it right and think I'm doing it wrong.

Update: Indeed, I am an idiot. It took me a long time to figure out what I was doing wrong. A ball of yarn may have been thrown across the room. But I figured it out. It was my bad. I was yarn-overing wrong. For every yarn-over, I was yarn-overing AND knitting the stitch which always brought my stitches out wrong.

4 comments:

Em Jones said...

It took me three weeks to learn how to purl. During one memorable Blue Jackets game (at the arena) I invented several new and interesting purl stitches.
That being said starting out with lace using mohair is pretty ambitious. Do you know about the dental floss trick?

E said...

Well, normally I wouldn't be even attempting it yet, but I'd really like to make it as a gift for my advisor. I thought a month should give me enough time (although, it took me an hour to do about 5 rows last night)

No, I do not know about the dental floss trick, but I think I need to look into it...

Em Jones said...

The first lace I used mohair for was the "Airy Scarf" from Last Minute Knitted Gifts." It's a great beginner pattern for first time lace/first time mohair knitters and it's basically just knit, purl and YOs. It also knits up very quickly. I think it was a 10-row repeat pattern.

The second lace pattern I attempted was "Branching Out" from Knitty. http://www.knitty.com/issuespring05/PATTbranchingout.html

I didn't use the mohair version though, the silky wool was quite nice to work with and I can get a little frustrated with mohair. Again, I think there's a 10-row pattern repeat with Branching Out.

I used the dental floss trick on both projects. When you get to the end of the pattern repeat (the last row) use your darning needle to work a piece of (non fuzzy) dental floss or a thin piece of yarn in a contrasting color through that last row. Then, if you mess up your stitches anytime in the next pattern repeat, you can just frog back to your dental floss, re-insert your needle and start the pattern repeat again.

I'm decent at un-knitting something, but frequently, I'll twist stitches when I put them back on the needle. This save me from having to worry. Also, while the airy scarf pattern might be simple enough to un-knit (or tink) with relative ease, the Branching Out Pattern is much, much harder to find your place in. It's not that hard, but I would consider it Big Girl lace knitting. I would consider the airy scarf a pattern I could knit while talking. I couldn't do that (at least at first) with Branching Out. I think I have pictures of both on my Flickr and my Ravelry page.

Good luck!

E said...

Thanks - I'm definitely going to try the dental floss trick. I'm knitting "Wisp" for my advisory, but without the side eyelets. From what I could tell, it is a fairly easy lace pattern (not much counting).

I'll check out your Flickr page...

Thank your for all your help!