June 21, 2004

Excuses, excuses.

Here's all I've got done on the Mango tank.

mangotank

Dissapointed? Yeah...me too. I think I knit pretty fast and yet, well, this one is slow. Without further ado I give you the list of excuses reasons why I have not made much progress on the tank.

1. The pattern has you cast on the fronts and back all together. This means that while the progress may seem slow, there are no other pieces to knit when this is done. This is mystically both encouraging and crushing at the same time.

2. I am knitting it back and forth on a circular. It is not an especially good circular, because I don't like working on circulars and therefore, do not invest heavily in them. Yes, it has been pointed out to me that if I were to invest in better circulars I might like them more. Yes, I feel the burning sting of irony.

3. This amount of tank has been knit two and a half times, due to my own stupidity. The lace instruction got the better of me (You know...the pattern calls this "crochet stitch" and that should have been a tip off, crochet and I have an unstable relationship) and the first attempt looked like this...

mangomistake

At this point, two things occurred to me more or less simultaneously. First, I noticed that my lace looked nothing like the lace in the pattern, and I decided that although I was open to the possibility that this was to be a happy accident, I hated it. Secondly, I realized that although I had knit a swatch for the "rack" part, I had not swatched the lace and was undoubtedly being punished for not sacrificing to the muse of knitting, so in an attempt to release myself from her wrath I went back and did that. I screwed around with it until I had grasped the meaning of the instruction, and got something that looked like the picture.

mangoswatch

If you look closely at the swatch you can see that I tried different stuff every inch or so until I had it worked out. We will not be discussing the instruction that gave me trouble, as now that I've come to my senses it's obscenely simple.
I ripped back the tank, refraining from unladylike language the whole time.

4. What is it about my personality that says "Hey! I know...this yarn has a reputation for splitting up like J-lo, but I think that I'll choose a project that requires tons of stitch manipulation. You know, lots of K2tog, and psso....yeah, that's a good idea. Even thought this yarn has lots of fine qualities, let's pick its one failing and capitalize on it. Sign me up."


5. Since this yarn (used in this stitch pattern) is irresponsible and needs to be watched every minute to see if I am knitting all the plies of every stitch, I can't work on it while reading e-mail. This cuts down on the amount of time that it's getting.


6. I was zooming along when I discovered a mistake. The attempt to fix my mistake by dropping down the offending section and reknitting it back up with dpns was by all accounts, a miserable failure. Due to some kind of wandering K2tog action, this strategy was doomed from the start, yet I tried anyway. Here we see me with 4 needles, being used more or less at once with 3 strands of yarn. There are no words. (Did I mention that this did not work?)

fixingmango

This time when I frogged the work back halfway I may have dipped my foot briefly into the pool of self-pity. Three days and I've got one days work done. Today isn't looking good for the poor tank either, as I'm celebrating the anniversary of my godless heathen union with this man...

joe

This man is the funniest, gentlest, smartest man who ever lived with this much wool. He's entertaining, patient and kind, has never, even once suggested that I should have less yarn, maintains that living with a crazy woman and three daughters is a privilege and I'm still having a blast with him every day.
By the way Joe? Nice *rack*, baby.

Posted by Stephanie at June 21, 2004 11:49 AM