In stitches

Looks like I'll be burning the midnight oil tonight. I'm determined to finish my second ribbed hat this evening. I suspect that may mean staying up until 2 a.m. Who needs sleep, right?

I got a late start on it tonight, although if I had more backbone, I might have worked on it in my office while waiting to tape the show delayed from last week's snow days. Late this afternoon the place was a dead zone and an icebox. (There's a vent in my office that blows cold air nonstop.) It's probably best, though, that my knitting remains secret from co-workers and students. I'd never hear the end of the jokes.

I lost an inch and a half from frogging. That doesn't sound like much, so let me put it in numbers that will let you understand why I was ready to turn into a quivering heap on the floor. There are ninety stitches per row. Eight rows equal an inch, so I ripped out twelve rows, plus two that I knitted and frogged again because of the dropped stitches. That comes to a grand total of 1260 frogged stitches. Granted, that's better than restarting from scratch but still...

I'm shaping the top, so I'm in the home stretch now. Knitting and purling two together is difficult, but it's been a little easier than the first time I made this toque. Since Donna got such terrific results with her first knitted hat, I checked with her about a couple things that didn't work for me. I know that I need to do the mattress stitch to seam the hat. My mistake is that when I hear "sewing", I think of something that you take through one side and bring back through. No wonder my seam was so hideous. The same goes for weaving in ends. I've been doing that all wrong, no thanks to help site instructions that tell you to sew in the tails but don't get more specific.

She also helped clear up this right side/wrong side business. You know those slippers I made? I turned them inside out tonight, and they look a lot better. Yep, I've been wearing them with the wrong side facing. Before I was afraid that turning them inside out would cause them to come apart. The first one I made has a hole in the toes and a tail that won't stay hidden. I guess that gives me an excuse to make more, doesn't it?

Thanks for the tips on the circs. I'll be working in earnest on the baby blanket once I get this hat finished. We'll see how it goes with them. February is the shortest month, but I think I'm going to have more FOs these 28 days than I did in January's 31. Go figure.