I See Myself Sitting In a Warm Cozy Room Knitting

A Week of Eurekas

I have never felt more clumsy and more accomplished at the same time as this week.  I often feel clumsy and I often feel accomplished, but this week is a highlight for both at the same time.

And in two departments as well. 

If you follow this blog at all, and have been this week, you already can guess at the first area, yep, blogging intricacies.  The finer points of dressin’ up my point.

The other is knitting. 

Have you ever looked at something one way, think you know what your up to, think your doin’ things right, think your strollin’ along just fine, not real thrilled, think it could look better, but it is what it is and you think you are doing the best that can be done with your resources and recipes?  Until, of course, you spy out of the corner of your eye, in the shadow of things, a suggestion to try it just a little different?

You try and then… Bam!  Your whole world is rocked like the San Andreas fault and all of a sudden you are doin’ something you should have been all along, it feels great, you feel great, every thing is great, and you’re drinkin’ in the world like it is your raw oyster.

That was my week, blogging and knitting.  The only thing I’m gonna say about the bloggin’ end of things is that I can’t believe that it took me this long to grasp some fairly simple rather obvious notions.  Oh I guess I’m not surprised that I didn’t catch on sooner that I was missin’ a beat and I could do somethin’ about it.

“How I See Myself” Knitting

As for the knitting  I have lots to say, mostly ‘cuz I feel like it and it is my subject for the header challenge, “how I see myself”.  Go see what the other fellows have this week (Dave, Fishing_Guy,  Mac, and Gail’s Man). Hey, after you read what I wrote, thank you very much!

I must say, that if it wasn’t for Imac’s wonderful suggestion on what I could use for a picture of myself and my father trusty ol’ tripod that I was left when I inherited his 35mm Pentax and all his wonderful lenses, (something I hope to replace with a digital version soon) I would have been sorely wanting for a photo for this week’s challenge.

The only problem with using my little baby pocket camera and the tripod, is that the screw doesn’t hold it tight enough on the pad, so I tuck the wrist strap underneath it to take up the slack.  It works great. 

My silly little pocket camera has a 3x on a delay, (it takes three pictures timed out and with a little blinky light so you know about when it’s gonna snap a pic all on it own) which doesn’t get used all that often. But isn’t technology groovy? and it even comes in small affordable packages. 

So I set it all up, reached above my head, clicked the button and knit while I took my own picture!  Okay, it took a bit longer than that to set it up, and get the focus and direction all figured out, but hey…

 Knitting Project to the Rescue!

I’ve been needing to get back to my knitting, it usually is a winter activity for me but since we haven’t had much of a winter and other things have been calling… you know. 

Anna and I were talking and she mentioned that she needed to make a baby blanket for a new friend. I offered to find her an easy pattern.  It was just the shove I needed.  I found an easy pattern on Lion Brand Yarn website.  It was a new twist for me, working with more than one color in the same row.

I pulled out three balls of washcloth cotton to give it a practice. 

It went together easy enough and looked real sweet.  If you notice some of the two colored double rows are striped themselves and some look like ticking.  The pattern calls for the ticking look, I like the striped look.  Stripes in stripes.

It was a nice enough pattern but the backside looked poor.  Much like the inside of a sweater. I decided I’d be a bit more particular about the way I dealt with the non-working color and put it over the working yarn, rather a version of twinned yarn.

It turned out great!  I can’t believe the difference.  It doesn’t make the backside look gorgeous, but it is definitely not the inside of a sweater any more!

In fact, I rather like the look, (the backside is shown on the top of the picture) it reminds me of something…. you know, it’s those bathrobes from the fifties that had the red and white coiled trim on the egdes.  Yeah I spent way too long googling to find and example last night, way too long, but I bet Mildred could find one or Farside has a picture of her little brother in one. Any way, if you’re old enough you know what bathrobe I’m talking about but you might not necessarily see it in the pattern like I do.  And the colors send me into a retro tail spin, I love it. 

I’m going to put up the long laborious instruction on how I achieved the proper look on the back in post on my recipe blog later tonight or tomorrow morning (things are backin’ up).  You don’t really have to follow me over there if knitting is a bore or if you are a good knitter yourself.  Trust me, you won’t be getting expert how to’s,  because I am barely out of the beginners box, I just like to run farther ahead that I ought on way too many things.

My mom had a succinct way of putting it, “a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none.”  That’s why when I first began blogging, my profile quickly stated that I had many interests but I was no expert in anything.  Dismal existence I know, but that’s the way I like it.

What I will say here, just so you know, is that my method of knitting is pic knit, or continental knitting.  You can see it in my header, the way I hold my needles and yarn.

I hold my working yarn in my left hand so that I don’t have to throw it, I found years ago that throwing was what was keeping me from really enjoying knitting among other woes that go with throwing the working yarn, like random tension and dropped stitches, heck, dropped needles for that matter.

The problem with working two yarns pic knit style is that it seemed hard at first how to make the switch between yarns and move the non working yarn between the needle and the working yarn.  That is what my eureka is all about this week and why I am putting together a little tutorial for Anna.

Ya know, if you don’t knit because it seems awkward and a lot of wasted movement, stop over at my other blog and have a look see, maybe pic knitting will solve your knitting issues like it did mine.

I’ll leave you with just this one question Clever Reader, how come knitting isn’t done with kneedles?