Just knitting

Asherton Reversible Scarf

Yarn: Dark Horse Yarns-Fantasy (50% nylon, 50% acrylic; worsted weight)
Color: Cherry
Needles: US 8s
Stitches: 40

This is my contribution to the Red Scarf Project. I had fun knitting it, but I am ready for something that requires less brain power. Time to fire up the Knit Picks Options needles and knit a blanket.

Christmas knitting begins. I'm making the diagonal baby blanket again, but you can go ahead and remove "baby" from the project's name. I've crunched the numbers and am hoping I have applied the correct logic to my computations. If 126 stitches on the diagonal equal a 36" square, then it follows that 42 stitches equal 12". I've decided that a 48"x48" blanket is a good size for adults, so if I increase to 168 stitches, I should be able to get those dimensions. It took three skeins for the 36"x36" blanket, so four skeins should do the trick, right? I'll find out sooner or later, but if you see a flaw in my math, please let me know.

O glorious garter stitch, how I adore three! After an embattled week, it's nice to be able to zone out and knit to my heart's content. The Options cable is more flexible than the one with the plastic circs I used to knit the other blankets. I'm also having an easier time moving the stitches. So far, so good with the new needles.

I'm perplexed by what purpose the cable keys serve. How are they supposed to help in tightening the needles to the cable? I have noticed that the needles can become loose, but there have been no accidents yet.

That said, I courted disaster while knitting the blanket in the Borders café. The last stitches on the needle attempted to slip off a couple times. The lid on my hot chocolate popped off, and I almost slopped the drink all over my lap. (My WIP and iPod would have been ruined.) I paused in the middle of a row to find more music after an iPod playlist ended. Apparently I reversed course when I resumed because things weren't looking right. I have no idea how I did it, but I caught the mistake before I knit many stitches.

All in all, not a bad day. I started a new project and rediscovered a terrific album in my collection (Sloan's One Chord to Another). That sounds like a good end to an otherwise frustrating week.

Reversible

My donation to the Red Scarf Project is finished. I almost had the Asherton Reversible Scarf done before going to bed last night, but I saved four rows of garter stitch and binding off for this morning. Weaving in the ends was a lunchtime activity. Parceling instant satisfaction to reduce the stress of the day is a sign that I'm way overdue for a string of breaks in my favor. And yes, that means I found pleasure in weaving in the ends, something I typically don't like doing.

Despite a couple setbacks that called for frogging, this scarf provided a mood boost. I guess it is reversible in more ways than one. May the scarf serve its recipient well too.

I disliked every photograph I took of it in my office today, so I'll hold off posting a final picture until tomorrow. It will look better under natural light than fluorescent anyway. The same probably applies to me too. When I left work I realized I had been inside for eight and a half hours straight with limited glimpses of outside. Being cooped up like that can't be helping.

I've been in a fire-breathing mood off and on today. Everything seems to be going wrong. I swear I'm trying to find the humor in it. There's nothing life or death about the circle of aggravation I'm trapped in, but it is ever so irritating nonetheless. I know I'm a worrier, which doesn't help matters, so I need to find another knitting project to give my mind a reprieve. If only I could solve that math problem.

Nonlinear equations

On days like today I wonder how I managed to keep up the pace I did in past years. I used to host a football coach's show, which meant that for ten Saturdays in the fall I went to the team's games. Home games meant slightly shorter days, although my work commitment with the TV station had me there a few hours early and about an hour afterward. Road games were almost always all day affairs that followed work on Friday night for a high school game. Fall weekends were not times for catching my breath.

A couple years ago I handed most of the show's responsibilities to a student. I wanted more time to wind down and found that I needed it. To bring in some extra bucks I'm still the official statistician for home games, but this only takes a few hours out of five Saturdays...usually. It's not so bad, especially since this fall my Friday nights are free for a change. (We're handling production of the high school games in a way that doesn't require my presence.) I actually have a weekend. Hallelujah.

After years of fall Fridays and Saturdays being busy, slow weekends are appreciated. I took an early afternoon nap that culminated in a feeling that was like shaking off the rust of a thousand years. Then I turned to knitting for a significant portion of today's remaining hours. If I would have dug out a jacket to stave off the chill in the air, I might have knit outside on my west balcony. (That's where I snapped the picture at the top of this post.) Instead I situated myself in front of the television.

The Asherton Reversible Scarf is about two repeats from completion. I will be proud to send it to the people at the Red Scarf Project, and I will be glad to have it finished. I couldn't be happier with how it looks, but I'm beginning to get a little tired of constantly checking the pattern. I'm ready for some mindless knitting.

I'm thinking of making the diagonal baby blanket but want to adapt the pattern so it's bigger. Unlike the two previous times I've knit it, the intended recipient isn't a baby (or its parents). I've been trying to calculate the math out loud and scribbled measurements utilizing the Pythagorean theorem, but I'm having trouble determining how many stitches I'd need to make it 48"x48" or 60"x60". What would be a "proper" size for adults?

9 stitches and 18 rows=4 inches. The pattern increases to 126 stitches for a 36" square blanket. Apparently I am unable to summon my algebraic powers to compute the number of stitches. What's the easy answer and formula I'm not seeing?

Keeping it real

I've finished the first skein of yarn for the Asherton Reversible Scarf, meaning I have 60% of my contribution to the Red Scarf Project completed. (See, I told you there are numbers kicking around in my head.) I'm eager to get it done for a couple reasons. I'd like to be knitting something that requires slightly less attention to what row I'm on. I also want to use my new Knit Picks Options needles. All I've done is take them out of their packaging.

I've considered knitting the scarf off the straights and onto the circs, but I'm exercising patience and sticking to the needles that have produced the beautiful work in progress. I'm not in much of a waiting mood, though. I deplete enough of that during the day.

I'm also beginning to realize that I have put off Christmas gift knitting past the point I should have, so I feel like I need to pick up the pace. Truthfully, my intention to knit log cabin blankets--say, five of them--in time for the holiday was full-blown insanity, so I'm probably better off acknowledging that it is impossible and developing an alternative. (Don't say socks. I still haven't finished one pair.)

I want to knit a couple items for me too. The scarves I made myself are fine, but I'd like to make something shorter than the ever-stretching garter stitch objects I knitted. I also want to knit a hat or two for myself. Those I knitted on straights have the problems of an ugly seam or being too tight. At the time I didn't know the long tail cast-on or how to use circular needles.

I'm tempted to take my knitting to work now that I have my own office. I've been closing the door while I eat my lunch, so taking some of that time to knit might be a good idea. Certainly it could ease the aggravation that continues to bubble up regarding our still incomplete operational status from the move.

That settles it. I am the secret knitter, and I ought to be living up to my name. The scarf goes with me to work tomorrow.

Come undone

I wrote yesterday that the Asherton Reversible Scarf had managed to remain error-free. Bzzt! What I failed to observe at the coffee shop was that five stitches in the last row I worked on were purled when they should have been knitted. I did ten more rows before spotting a splotch of garter stitch ruining the pattern.

Even if I weren't making the scarf for charity, this was a glaring mistake I would have to fix. I saved the repair work for this morning. It was slow going, so I put it down for more immediate frogging satisfaction. Yes, after a delay of more than two months, I ripped out the sock in variegated green yarn with too many cast on stitches.

What I didn't think about was the mess of unraveled yarn pooling on the floor. Might this come back to bite me? You bet. I picked up the pile and began winding it into a ball. But oh, the knots! I picked and pulled at them. I took what remained in the skein and unraveled it on the floor, turning my living room and dining area into a surface for an extremely long and winding river of fiber. Having devoted at least an hour to this task, I accepted that a couple judicious snips of the scissors would take care of the problem without losing too much yarn. For Pete's sake, I have another skein of the stuff. Determination can be a drawback.

When ripping out a lot, is there a good way to keep the yarn from tangling? I know that I'll have to do massive frogging sooner or later and would prefer not to deal with this secondary headache again if possible.

In the afternoon I undid the seven other rows necessary to get to the root of the problem. Five wrong stitches meant undoing 440. A stitch in time saves nine., so the saying goes. I suppose that rolls off the tongue better than a stitch in time saves eighty-eight.

Lately I've noticed a slight uptick in my site traffic via search engines. Lurkers new and old are welcome to make themselves known in the comments. Those same stats also show a couple visitors via a Ravelry discussion topic. Knowing that I've come up in discussion somehow, no matter how insignificant, and not being able to check it is maddening. As if having 11,000-plus people ahead of me in line for Ravelry isn't enough.

The good news is that it sounds like the day is near when the doors will be thrown open to the thousands of us on the waiting list. Donna gave me a peek at the site when I visited her, but this video tour really has me eager to join all the cool kids.