Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Sad End of a Project and Art Ed Knitting

Before the tragedy befell my Mossy Cardi
The blog has been a bit quiet for a number of reason - mostly day job related.  But I hit something of a rough patch in my knitting too.  I pulled out the Mossy Cardi to take up my knitting where I left off in early fall.  I was knitting along, dividing for armholes, decreasing for neckline shaping and I picked up my sweater to admire it and found a great big honking mistake.  Actually a hole - perhaps even a moth hole.  Of course it is in a truly obnoxious place - center lower back - as though I am sprouting a tail and need a place for it to come through.  I have not seen any other evidence of same, but I am up against a decision.

1. Duplicate stitch over said hole, unravel excess yarn  & carry on.  Hope mend doesn't show.

2. Unravel sweater to hole & reknit, watching carefully for 'evidence.'

3. Unravel entire sweater, watching carefully for 'evidence,' wash all yarn and decide which sweater I want to knit. 

4. Glare at the offending sweater and wish it would get better by itself.  This has so far been my ploy.  Sadly, it is not working.

On a more positive note, I will be joining my colleague Barbara in her Art Ed class as we teach a dozen or so future elementary teachers (and a couple of future art teachers) to knit.  We are using a super simple hand warmers pattern, First Fingerless Mitts [Rav link].  All you really do is knit a rectangle and sew it up, leaving a thumbhole.  But for a begininng knitting project, it's about right.  I prefer to knit a wee thumb, but this time it's not really about me.

Last evening, Barbara and I went to a chain crafts shop to purchase yarn.  We got a nice mix of colors in a collection of tweeds & soloids.  I bought myself some Lion Brand Amazing as my class samples.  'Amazing' is Lion Brand's wool-acrylic color change yarn.  I don't have the ball band with me, so I can't tell you the color name and number, but it is a lovely orange-copper-red-gold combination that I like very much.  I've knit about 2 inches of garter stitch and it looks lovely.  I like the fact that they won't be 'matchy-matchy' though I'm not sure our students will appreciate it nearly as much.  After my short lecture on the history of knitting and looking at a few samples, casting on begins tomorrow.   

1 comment:

Jess said...

I'm so glad that you're enjoying our Amazing yarn! It looks like you've picked up our Mesa colorway. The great thing about using a color-changing yarn is that it helps keep your visual interest, even if you're using garter stitch! It's also great for beginners because they can still see their stitches beyond the color changes. Best of luck with your teaching!

With warm regards,
Jess H.
Lion Brand Yarn