I never begin a project expecting to fail. There are some cases, though, where I know I’m taking a calculated risk.

With the sock surgery, I knew that it could end up being impossible to graft the two halves back together, and that I might have to reknit the heel. Since I’d have to do that either way, I figured that it was worth it to try a new technique, at the possible cost of an extra end to weave in and a few hours of poking around with the grafting.

Knowledge of this risk might be why I am so inordinately pleased that it worked. I didn’t expect it to fail, but I’d have put the odds at a little better than 50/50 that it would work out.

I started out with simple grafting. I put the yarn through two of the live stitches on the needle.

Then, I passed it through one leg of each stitch on the first row of the heel section.

I left the stitches loose until I had done quite a few in a row, then went back and tightened them up.

This gave me a join that was offset by half a stitch.

I thought I might be able to do better than that. So, instead of passing the needle through the legs of two stitches, I passed it behind both legs of a single stitch.

Which makes much more sense, really, because this is what the yarn was doing in the row that I pulled out to split the two halves of the sock; one loop wrapping around the two legs of the stitch in the next row. This gave me a much better join.

Honestly, I’m not sure that I could even point out which row was grafted, without examining very, very closely.

For a surgery with 50/50 chances, I’d say it turned out pretty well.

This week, two projects have needed minor surgery.

I knit a lot on the shawl last weekend, and was making good progress. Just as I put it down on Sunday night, though, I noticed this:

Do you see that? In the diamond column? Two pairs of little diamonds that got joined at the point (in both columns). I wasn’t going to rip all the way back for those, but I also wasn’t going to leave them there. So, that became this:

And then was carefully worked back up to the needles. The patient healed well, and is showing no permanent scarring. In fact, she’s even progressing rather nicely after her surgery.

The second patient was a slightly more subtle case. I finished the second sock that’s been my bus knitting lately:

As you can see, the second sock is a little bit shorter than the first. Careful counting verified that all of my stitch counts were correct, but that I had somehow increased once every 2 rows for the second sock and once every 3 rows for the first while making the arch expansion (this is the disadvantage of bus knitting…much easier to miss important instructions in my notes!). The second sock still fits, but it’s a bit tight at the toes and just doesn’t fit as well in the arch area.

I didn’t really want to pull the whole thing back and re-knit it, but I also want a sock that I will wear. So, I took this opportunity to practice a technique that I have seen but have never tried myself. First, I cut one tiny little stitch.

Then, I began to unpick the row that it belongs to:

This gave me two halves of a sock; the heel and cuff, and the toe-arch section.

I pulled back the offending increases, and picked up the stitches to rework them.

And now I have bus knitting for tomorrow.

I’m happy to report that both surgeries went well, and the patients are well on their way to a speedy recovery. I’ll keep you updated on their convalescence.

I’m not usually much of a product knitter. I don’t mind projects that go on (and on) for months at a time. I like sinking into one thing and working my way, stitch by stitch, through from beginning to end.

Sometimes, though, it’s good to see some progress. It may be because I don’t feel like there’s been a lot of progress happening at work lately, or it may be for some other completely random and unfathomable reason, but right now I really want to see things move.

Fast.

Go! Go!

I’m not sure that that this week was a success in that regard, but things have progressed a little since last we spoke.

I pinned the stole out this time, partly so that you can see the pattern and partly because it makes it look just a leettle bit bigger.

This project has taken a long time to get off the ground. I’ve been tweaking my design process lately, and the current method puts a lot of the planning at the beginning before the knitting begins (this will generally be a very good thing, but it’s also a pretty big change, since I generally like to feel my way through a design rather than planning out every last thing). Then we found out that I was knitting it with the wrong yarn, and then the wrong needles. Fussing here and there.

But I think we have it now. The fabric is pretty dense for lace, but I like the visual weight of it. The yarn (Misti Alpaca) is fine enough that it is very light despite the stockinette base. I like how the three stitch patterns are working together, even if they do have different and non-compatible row counts so that each row is unique (they’re easy enough to memorize, so there’s not much need for charts except as a reference after the first few repeats). I love the color, and it’s working much, much better with the pattern. And the needles sing. I love Addi lace.

So. A few inches, but really quite a bit of progress.

Now, I wonder how far I can go before switching to the next stitch pattern?

I lasted until about Tuesday before casting on with the Chiaogoo needles, despite their blunt tips. I had visions of just sucking it up and knitting the whole shawl with them. I tried to convince myself that they weren’t too bad.

And then yesterday, I was out running errands and stopped by the yarn store that I knew had Addis.

What a difference it makes to have the right tool.

I’d say my speed has doubled. As long as you don’t count the part where I had to pull back 3 times because I made a mistake that I couldn’t seem to fix. (It’s fixed now. )(I hope.)

I now have the right needles, and I’m pretty sure I have the right yarn this time.

My gauge doesn’t seem to have changed much, but I’ll probably do a light blocking on the needles in a few rows just to be sure. Wouldn’t want to have to pull all the way back, even if the knitting is faster this time around! For now, I’m calling this a swatch.

I also finished the warping this afternoon. There were a few tangles, and some odd problem that caused a few warp threads to break (still not sure why), but we are out of the woods now. I even have a little bit of fabric begun.

(That dark color is really green, not brown…)

Though warping takes forever, the weaving is indeed fast.

There might be a glimmer of hope that this will be a productive week.

Those who say that weaving is fast are referring to the part that comes after all the threads are loaded into the loom. It’s true: the weaving is fast, but the warping is slow.

Four hundred and twenty pieces of string, cut into 6-yard pieces, must be wound through the loom and settled into place before the weaving can begin. Every piece must pass through two holes in the right sequence in preparation for the pattern in the fabric. Not hard. Not cumbersome. But slow and methodical. Patience and care come at the beginning of the project, before the making can commence. Careful winding and unwinding, avoiding tangles and knots.

An investment of time that will be paid back by the speed of casting a shuttle and turning warp into fabric.

Charts? Check.

Yarn? Check.

Needles? Umm…??

I can’t believe that these are words that I can still say, but I don’t have the right needles for the lace I cast on the other day. It has been a long, long time since I’ve needed a needle and not had it.A glance at my needle collection would be enough to convince you that I have everything anyone could ever need, and multiple copies at that. And yet, I appear to have missed filling in the smaller sizes in my Addi lace collection. Huh.

The cast on I showed you was on size 3 Addis, but the gauge was way too loose. I wanted to go down to a 1 or a 2. I have a 2.25 mm (I think….it’s the one that has no equivalent US size), but that’s coming out a little too tight.

I went to knit night at my LYS on Wednesday, and bought size 1 and 2 in their pointiest needles (ChiaoGoos), as they don’t carry Addis. I’ve never tried Chiaogoo needles before. They looked pretty pointy, but after the first few rows of lace, I discovered that they’re not really pointy enough for things like k3tog. (Or at least not with this yarn and my tension.)

Guess I’ll be knitting on something else for a while…maybe a sock that is much needed to complete a pair. Or maybe a neglected sweater. Too bad, though…I was hoping to make some headway on the lace this weekend. Good thing there are plenty of distractions around!

Oh, dear. A box full of distraction showed up at my door tonight.

It had some cotton in it.

And some lovely, lovely wool.

A bit of  tussah silk.

And some bamboo.

(I love that color.)

I’m so glad it’s almost the weekend.

For the progress-obsessed among us, blogs can be a dangerous thing. Not only do I want to feel like I’m getting somewhere with my knitting, but I also want to be able to show that I’ve gotten somewhere. You know – blog fodder.

I’ve spent more time on knitting in the past 4 days than I probably have in the past 3 weeks. Which is great. Except that it’s all invisible.

A chart here, a swatch there.

Preparation for bigger things.

Learning, absorbing, closely studying how others work, and how they present their work. Following by example. Finding my own way.

But that doesn’t leave me with much to show.

So today, I present you with one hundred and forty closely packed stitches on some rather small needles.

A promise of more to come.

Creativity is a cat. Chase it, and it will run away. Ignore it, look the other way, and it will rub up against you and jump in your lap. (Where it may or may not interrupt your current knitting plans, depending on its mood.)

I told you last week that I have put aside the complicated lace patterns for the moment in favor of simple, mindless, meditative knits.

I made a cowl-y thing. And a hat. Yesterday, I finished a sock.

Baby steps. Basics.

And then, all of a sudden, there was a tickle at the back of my brain. The shawl was calling. Not necessarily calling me to knit, but calling to say I’d picked the wrong yarn.

I love the Mountain Colors yarn. Love it.

But my lace is getting lost in its color changes.

(The fact that the photo has to be that overexposed to see both the lace and the color should tell you something…)

It looks ever so much better in the plain yarn that I used to swatch when I needed to see my stitches more clearly.

It needs a plain yarn. It told me so, in the moment that I was ignoring it. A quiet whisper in my ear, unbidden and unexpected.

I didn’t even know that there was a problem, though I had suspected that the yarn might not be perfect for this project. I probably should have figured it out when I wasn’t excited about picking it back up after the move, but I just chalked that up to general life craziness. And now, it’s solved before I even knew it was there.

Sometimes I forget that the best way to find creative answers  is to simply walk away and wait for them to come padding in on quiet cat feet.

In the darkness of winter, we can all use a little brightness.  I found myself drawn deep into the color of this scarf as I knit, wrapped up in the comfort of its warmth. Its pure, vibrant red makes me think of fire and the warm, earthy spices that brighten these cold days. Mulled cider by the fireplace, the warm, red glow of embers.

In its pattern, I see a million things. Sharp, crackling flames.

Deep, oscillating zig zags.

Undulating vines.

Ocean waves.

Woven ribbons.

Sailboats racing into the breeze, a reminder that summer will return.

It’s light and airy, but it’s also warm. Warm enough that I managed to take off my coat (in 20 degree weather) to take a few pictures while Branden was home. The edges still curl a tiny bit, where the garter stitch border folds behind the lace and gives it stability. A quiet reminder that it began as the cinnamon stick scarf.

There’s little of that left, though, in the airy lace this has become.

These fiery berries were the only color we found in the soft grey landscape.

Some squirrel will be glad to find them waiting in the winter snow, a beacon of hope, a memory of fall’s bounty.

Thanks to Branden’s technical wrangling, the scarf is now available on the pattern page, and through Ravelry.