When knitting, Easter and Anatomy Lab collide.

Follow @cmsvoteup

Rose Red Tam

How about you?

Follow @cmsvoteup

Get it? This here uterus has a great “view” because it’s hanging from a tree. No? Geez you’re hard to please. How ’bout this?

Imagine how many Oscars The Piano COULD’VE won had they not cast that !@#$% Holly Hunter.

Follow @cmsvoteup

“I don’t feel so good, Grandma!”

“Well, of course you don’t, boy! You gorged yourself on Tri-Delt brains down on sorority row last night and every Zombie knows those girls are so full of laxatives you wont @#$% right for a week!”

P.S. — So how are you liking my little “KnitFail” series?

Follow @cmsvoteup

The more you knit, the more you look for things that require you to learn something new. A twisted cable here, a bit of beaded lacework there — it’s enticing, and sometimes you can forget to take a step back and look at the big picture to determine if the pattern you’re working on is actually something you’re ever going to want or need. And it’s really hard to tell this on your own. But what are you to do if you’re an isolated knitter with no trusted knitting buddy to tell you when your wheels have started to slip off the rails? Well, rest easy, knitting friends for I — your web-crawling compatriot — have discovered the Knitter’s Litmus Test.

If at any time you find yourself looking at this picture…

…and thinking, “You know, that’s not a bad idea!” there is no more definitive sign of the clear and present danger you present to yourself and those closest to you. Drop your needles immediately and engage in benign activity until the madness passes. Read a book, take a walk, bake a cake — but for the love of heaven, do not allow yourself to bring another dickie into the world.

You might want to bookmark this page and reference it often, particularly as we embark on the annual Christmas Knitting frenzy. There is nothing like a looming deadline and a lack of sleep to enable an evil such as the one shown above to sneak into your Ravelry Queue.

Take care of yourself knitters. Don’t let a dickie happen to you or someone you love.

Follow @cmsvoteup

Creature Comfort by Madelinetosh

It’s knit flat, blocked, then seamed to make a shrug, with ribbed sleeves added afterward. Here’s mine in progress:

It’s so strange, but the yarn has been 100% cooperative since I started this project. Same needles, same knitter — the only difference is the pattern. Who knew yarn could prevent you from knitting it into the wrong thing? Just a few thousand more knits and purls, and it will be ready for mom’s Christmas present. I hope I’ve given myself enough time to finish it!

Follow @cmsvoteup

That’s a dinner plate giving this Rose Red tam it’s shape. Otherwise it looks something like a jellyfish — minus the tentacles of course..and fuzzy, as it is made entirely of Sublime Angora Merino. Delicious to knit, but the cause of much sneezing on my part. Oh, the lengths I go to for my family and friends.

Who gets it? That’s for me to know and you to find out. *wink*

Edited to add: This is a response to Bells question, “How was the knitting of it?” And I feel I must endorse this as the ideal gift knit. It only took three days of leisurely knitting and was one of those projects where I would keep marveling at the finished section’s beauty — which made me want to keep knitting “just one more row” to see the next portion. I will say, that I didn’t realize at first that there was a chart with this pattern and struggled needlessly through the 1st 20 or so rows using written instructions (personally, I hate those). I finally dropped my pattern sheets and thankfully, it fell open to the last page where I noticed the charting. It just flew off the needles from there. It’s only 70 something rows long, so you’re finished almost as soon as you start.

It’s a top down knit, beginning with the i-cord. There’s a few M1 rows at the start, then you’re increasing by yarnovers and decreasing with ssk, k2together and both sskp and a mitered double decrease — s, k2together, pass slipped stitch over. Personally, I can’t see much difference in those two stitches and would be interested in any knitter that could tell me when the ideal times are to use one over the other.

***RECENTLY LEARNED TIP: Just learned of a new, left-leaning decrease. It’s slip 1 as if to knit, slip one as if to purl, then knit the slipped stitches together. It’s supposed to be the best mirror of the right leaning k2tog. I don’t think Ysolda’s pattern needs any improving, but for all you anal retentive knitters out there in search of the perfect matching decreases, this might prove useful in future projects.

Follow @cmsvoteup

I’m loving it a lot despite the beading which requires a teensy weensy crochet needle on which you slip the bead then crochet it onto the stitch that requires a bead. Then you slip that stitch back on your knitting needles and knit it. The real fun comes when you have to bead on a decrease and remember which of the three stitches you’re working with will wind up in front and then place the bead accordingly. Needless to say, there’s been some cursing during this project. See the tiny seed beads?

Pretend you don’t notice the uneven stitches from all the times I’ve forgotten the yarn overs and had to go back and add them in several rows up. I’m hoping some of the really tight spots will block out better than they look now. Fingers crossed!

All in all, I’m really enjoying my first attempt at real laceweight as well as my first run at beading. The only casualty so far has been my size 14 crochet needle. Not much larger than a sewing needle, it suffered badly when Tom got a hold of it and attempted to do minor surgery on the leather recliner. Fortunately, its insane thinness meant that it bent in half instead of piercing through. I don’t particularly love those chairs, but am thrilled to not have to replace them anytime soon.

Anyone else up to their elbows in a project that may just be a tad beyond their skill level? I’d love to hear about it. It might help prevent me from shoving this project to the back of the closet and forgetting about it for a week or two (or 20).

Follow @cmsvoteup

I’m about 50g into a 100g skein (roughly 225 yards knit up out of 450 total) and ready to start the border. Now see how it looks today:

Yup. Frogged (Rip it! Rip it!). I was a few lines into the border when I realized I just didn’t like the pattern. The main body looked a teensy bit on the elderly side, and the border had all these nupps (pronounced “noops” as in “soups”) which are little clusters of stitches you gather together to look like a flat ball. And suddenly I realized I was knitting a little old lady shawl as opposed to a hip, young, boho-chic accessory type shawl. So I ripped it all out.

Sure, I could have kept going and given it away. I’m sure there are plenty of people who would think it was great. But in my mind that would be the equivalent of saying, “Hi, you are old and/or have horrible taste. Enjoy!”

Strangely, ripping out all that yardage didn’t bother me in the least. Because I really love that burnt orange skein of Malabrigo Sock, and it would be a bigger shame to waste it than to throw away a few hours’ (okay, maybe a week’s) worth of knitting time.

Has anyone else ever been that far into a project before having knitter’s remorse or have I just set a record for wasted effort?

Follow @cmsvoteup