A change of plans

I'm three weeks into life as a knitter, and I've met my match in this Katia Duende yarn. After four days, I've knitted a grand total of three and a half inches. Worse, I keep messing it up and need rescuing.

Friday brought a morning screening and a chance to have Kristin see the latest carnage from my efforts. The streets of Bexley hosted this repair, although this time we were smart enough to get in a vehicle instead of staying out in the cold. (We were already chilled to the bone from the seemingly unheated theater.) She played with the scarf until she was able to undo my errors. After she fixed it, she agreed that my decision to issue a temporary surrender and start a different project was for the best.

I'm not abandoning work on this scarf, just setting it aside for when I feel I'm up to the challenge. It can be a change of pace from other projects rather than my primary object. Is this the next step in my growth as a knitter? Now I'll have two projects going at once.

Taking a break on my mom's purple scarf doesn't mean I'm returning to bulkier yarn. This next scarf, the new #3, will be made from worsted weight Fantasy Dark Horse Yarns in dark green. The twist is that I will be wrapping two strands at the same time. The skeins have different dye lots, so there will be a subtle variation.

Kristin cast on the first stitch to my US 11s and prepared the skeins so the yarn is pulled from the middle. I meant to ask her if all skeins can be unraveled this way. (I've taken off the wrapper and rooted around for an end.) As I've found while knitting this scarf, it keeps the yarn neater and tighter.

My weekend was mostly free, so I intended to get a lot of knitting done. It took me a little while to build up my speed, but once I got going, there was no stopping me. OK, that's not entirely true. I encountered a couple situations in which I had to undo a stitch, but with this yarn I finally started to see how that was executed. It's still something I have to think about and am not always confident in doing, but I think it's sinking in...slowly.

I'm knitting fourteen stitches per row for this scarf. Initially I thought that was enough, but a few rows in I noticed it wasn't as wide as I expected. It's about a half inch narrower than my FOs. I didn't want to frog what I had completed. Even though two more stitches per row wouldn't hurt, I decided that it looked okay.

You might be wondering why I didn't notice this gauge issue from the swatch. The answer is simple. I haven't knitted any swatches yet. Do I need to sit in the corner for not following the rules? Kristin has mentioned the need to knit swatches but hasn't gone into any detail about it. The first two yarns I used had good guidelines, so swatches weren't necessary.

My knitting was coming along well until I realized that one of the two strands had broken. This must be a Sunday thing because it's happened two weeks in a row. Unlike my previous mid-skein crisis, I didn't have a lot of extra yarn for a tail. Actually, I undid three or four stitches to give me some yarn to work with and put me at the end of a row. I tied a slipknot to connect the broken ends and resumed knitting.

I'm maybe a third of the way done with this scarf, but I really like how it's looking. My initial thought was that it would be for one of my brothers. In a way, it's perfect for him. He's the one who tried to duck giving an answer for his favorite color because there are millions of colors when you account for shades. Since this scarf has two shades of green, I can tease him that I tried to find one he'd like.

I'm leaning toward giving this one to my dad, though. One thing I think I've been good at as a writer is keeping the audience in mind. Obviously there isn't an audience for a knitted article, but I think it helps to know who the intended recipient is. It certainly matters in choosing the yarn. Silly as it sounds, I like the idea that keeping the receiver in mind while knitting helps the object reach its Platonic ideal. After all, when it comes to gift giving, don't we always hear that it's the thought that counts?

Next...who knows? I'm caught up to the present.