1. I haven’t been knitting my KAL socks because I made a mistake some rows back and I’m not sure I can rip it back to the right spot without just having to rip the whole thing.
2. I haven’t been knitting anything else out of a sense of guilt/commitment.

Yeah, this is a great plan. I don’t even think the mistakes are super obvious, but apparently I can’t handle keeping it.

Here’s the offending sock:

So I’m going to take an official breather and then I think I’ll just start over, with a better understanding of the pattern and how it’s supposed to look. I think I need to start respecting my own instincts about when to think back a few rows because if I get too far in after errors that are too glaring I can’t handle it.

I’m knitting Cookie A’s Cusp along with my friend Erin and boy, is this pattern kicking my butt (in kind of a good way). I think I’ve gotten past most of the tricky parts, but I’m so glad we’re doing this in KAL format so we can alert each other to confusing bits.

This particular style of pattern is definitely helping me grow as a knitter while also making me scratch my head a fair bit (literally more often than not; I am one fidgety knitter). If anyone reading this doesn’t read the Yarn Harlot blog (which would be baffling), well, you should, and this post is relevant. Cookie A. spells out a lot of things really clearly, has cool color-coded schematics, and generally writes an awesome pattern. On the other hand, a few parts of the pattern seemed like they could use a little warning text when you have to cross-reference between written directions and charts (like “it may look like you have an extra stitch when you finish the chart but you’re supposed to, don’t fear!”) and there was one sidebar explaining how to keep an increase section in twisted rib that seemed far more confusing to me than “keep increases in twisted rib” would be.

What I think I’m saying, really, is that it’s really unlikely that any pattern will be written to the style guide in my head. Sometimes that’s a good thing that teaches me flexibility and research skills and sometimes I spend 5 minutes stating at a sidebar trying to figure out what in the world it means. Even the second case can teach me something, like that sometimes stating the goal of a particular action can be more enlightening than spelling out an algorithm. If I ever start designing myself, I’ll know for sure how I want my patterns to look! (I think there will be a lot of instructions that read something like “It’s important to use a stretchy bind-off. Here’s how I do it, but any stretchy bind-off will do!”)

Some more pictures of the progress I made between starting the draft of this post and now:

Yeah, it was that bad.

Oh, the humanity.

In the process of trying to to get my images to a reasonable size, I’m using an image editor ( pixlr ) that’s amusing me.

I’d intended to get rid of these swatches, so I took a picture to preserve the idea of them, but I couldn’t bear to throw them away in the end. I’m thinking of trying to find some super cheap frames and making some “art” to decorate my yarn closet. As sad as it is to decorate my stash before I decorate the rest of the apartment…

All different shapes and sizes! Different stitch patterns taken from that perpetual calendar that every knitter seems to have.

So we emptied everything out:

We used David's office to stage everything.

My guardian angels, Jenn and Britt, got goofy and snarky:

You be goofy, I'll be snarky.

Yarn got sorted by color:

This yarn looked untouchable packed in a garbage bag. Out in the open, it's nothing short of delicious.

Other yarn finally left home and found a new place to live, where perhaps it could finally be loved:

I say goodbye, you say hello (to some yarn).

And my closet has a floor:

You can see it and vacuum it and everything! It's not actually dingy; dunno why this picture pretends it is.

I made some attempts at panoramic shots to show how amazingly better it became:

Panorama of closet.

I can just go into my stash now and pick whatever I need. The drawers are sorted by yarn weight. The Palette is sorted by general color family for now and I can easily sort things more thoroughly later. My yarn closet is a happy, serene place. I owe Brittany and Jenn a LOT, and I hope dinner and yarn went a small way towards expressing that gratitude. (I was in a flutter of panic at the thought of doing it on my own and throughout much of the cleaning itself. The snark and silliness helped a lot.)

I’m working on a much more massive post about my recent stash reorganization, but in the meantime, here’s a picture of my hexipuff kit (for the Beekeeper’s Quilt and my last (?) Windschief (4th!). I did hexipuffs a while back and then put them away for a long time. I was having trouble getting them to be symmetrical. Might be time to try again because they’re damned cute.

Some knitting things!

• I knitted at least several things since we last spoke. I promise. I haven’t been abducted by aliens and replaced by a Pod Lisa. I just didn’t have a blog going so I posted them to twitter or entirely didn’t take a picture at all THE HORROR.
• I knit 4 of the same item, a new record. I managed to rather dull the exitement, though, by losing #2 before casting on for #4, and I still dearly miss my madelinetosh tosh DK (is that how they intend you to write out their yarns? seems repetitive) Windschief. The other 3 are for people who aren’t me, so this is a tragedy of near-unprecedented proportions. This disaster is in no way diminished by the fact that I knitted the thing during one supremely lazy and simultaneously productive Sunday.
• I’m on a weird, self-imposed project to read all of The Yarn Harlot’s blogs from day one. Somehow I was inspired by her anniversary post. I think I might be kind of crazy.

Okay, let’s see what pictures I can turn up by going through my twitter photo history.

Icelandic yarn bundle from Schoolhouse Press

Okay that picture is absolutely huge but I am not going to do something silly like allowing enormous pictures to stop my “blogging on a roll-ness” which is a phrase that I am pretty sure the Coke Zero made me invent. The story of the yarn bundle involves a lot of reading comprehension issues and the fact that I have two others of similar size is totally not my fault. I blame reading comprehension and the fact that colors look different on the Internet. Anyone want to knit sweaters with me? Like, multiple for each of us?

Anyone…?

Kate Davies' Donegal gloves which are the sort of very standard no-frills pattern that I needed.

Oh god they’re all going to be huge. FORGING AHEAD! No time for links; I’m sure all of the patterns are available on Ravelry anyway and I must continue with my MAD BLOGGING EXPERIMENT.

Looks like I gave away Windshief #3 with only a picture of the ribbing. Good job, me!

Looks like I’ll have to stalk my knitting to its new owner. This is knit with madtosh sock held double because I’m a crazy person and NEEDED THAT COLOR. THAT EXACT ONE. I also have a fixation on madelinetosh at the moment permanently.

How beautiful was this hat? It was SO BEAUTIFUL. I hope whoever has it now is really enjoying it. I called the restaurant I probably had it in last. No dice. No way to get in touch with the cab driver after…

The first Windshief, knitted for my boyfriend, which started this whole knitting jag. Yes, also madelinetosh WHO'S KEEPING TRACK?! And can you blame me, really?

I knitted the above two FROM STASH like someone who doesn’t buy more yarn than is clinically advisable.

In the process of an attempt at the Lopapeysa I've really wanted to make, I (1) determined my back-and-forth gauge is MUCH LOOSER than my in-the-round gauge. Also, the two greys I ordered were too similar to show the pattern. NOT ENOUGH CONTRAST. This set off a quest to knit more loosely.

I’m going backwards in time with these photos because that’s easiest. I’ve since learned to knit continental/yarn-in-left-hand and loosened up my overall knitting. I no longer do an extra little gratuitous tug on each and every stitch. Not only is that uncalled-for, it is  BAD FOR MY KNITTING. And prevents making sweaters that I really, really, REALLY want. Turns out that I’ll fix any knitting thing for an item that I want that badly.

This is how big those bundles are. Yeah.

Maybe I’ll knit some kind of super bulky blanket with the yarn held quadruple or something super normal like that. This hobby sure makes people do super normal things. Normal.

I almost forgot about this hat, somehow. This is an amazing hat. Peerie Flooers, Kate Davies. I want to make mitts for it.

I don’t want mittens, though, so the above fingerless-glove thing was an experiment into making fingerless gloves to learn how to make more pretty fingerless gloves and also because it has been COLD in San Francisco (yes, this means I am weak and no longer allowed to consider myself an East Coaster at heart, I think). I really want to do the gloves with the two-color corrugated ribbing on each finger, which probably means that I hate myself and secretly want punishment.

ONWARDS!

In which I try to make a pretty face instead of a silly one!

Proof that I weaved in the ends instead of just hiding them and hoping they don’t slip out, which, I will tell you, was EXTREMELY TEMPTING:

One of my self-imposed knitting tasks is to learn to love knitting socks because I really, really, really like to wear hand-knitted socks. I haven't touched this sock in weeks, naturally.

Gyllis, Stephen West. Lots of progress during Jury Duty. Actually finished this one, too. I do finish knitting from time to time!

Picture of it finished though? HAH. That’d take foresight.

As we travel BAAAACKWAARDDSSS IN TIMEEE (eerie voice) we discover — terrifying — the pre-woven-in-ends state of that hat (avert your eyes):

See? Understand my temptation?

Okay, that is as far back as Twitter’s memory goes. I’ll poke through photos on my phone for the next one or, what? Maybe generate new content? Speak in depth about something I’m currently working on? Resurrect some long-abandoned projects from the terror that my yarn closet has managed to become in the less-than-a-year I’ve been living in my current apartment? Who knows. I’m going to go with the “start typing and see where it goes” method for (theoretically) reliably producing posts.

Also, It’s 5:30, not 8:30. Dunno how to get this thing on California time.

It’s hard to tell, but this is the hood part of the KATJE hoodie. (Rav) (website) It’s made from some awesome Madeline Tosh DK and I love the heck out of it.

I’m taking a sweater class at A Verb For Keeping Warm in Oakland, and I’ve gotten really competitive with myself about getting lots done. I’ve nearly used up half the yarn in the two weeks since the first class. The class goes for 3 months, so I guess I’ll have to start a second project at this rate.

My appointment is soon, so I’d better post this!

It smells like burnt rubber.

Project I’m working on right now. Started today, nearing halfway through. It’s an “Abbi Shawl Collar Cardigan.”. More details when I finish (as early as tomorrow at this rate). So different than what I usually knit/knit with, but stress knitting will do that to you.

Have you ever returned yarn out of spite? Well, I’m more correctly returning this yarn because the person I was going to make a hat for was mean to someone I care about. So, I guess I’m most correctly returning yarn for (silent, unnoticed) revenge. And for $20 store credit.

I’m participating in a Mystery KAL now and it’s both bringing out my competitive spirit and my sense of knitting community. I want to finish every clue as soon as it comes out and also help everyone else to do the same.