hmmm... (boring)

soooo...this is more a paper related note for me than anything else... but the first instructional thing I found on knitting was written, and I couldn't work w/ that at all. admittedly, i probably read it twice and moved on. videos helped immensely. however, having learned the basic stitches and a little lingo, now reading some things makes more sense. granted there were pics accompanying what I was reading about (variations on stitches) but no video, no process. i was a little surprised, but i guess it's just a matter of now having more of a reference for the words. i did ultimately try it so in essence putting my own 'video' to the words, but the important thing is that somehow something changed... or maybe it was just who wrote the directiosn. who knows. just something noteworthy i guess... would be a li'l piagetian i think... or could still be vygotsky...not sure... li'l time to figure it out too - eek...

31 stitches the whole time!!

    yippee!! it worked! didn't drop any stitches. didn't gain any. rock on!!! tension consistency needs much work, sure, but one thing at a time. *grin*

experiments in knit/purl combinations

  (that pic's kinda blurry, huh - my bad. didn't notice on the phone, may change it later) doing some more experimenting. the far left section is just straight knitting. the middle section is a combination of knits and purls. the far right section is actually a combination of totally knitted rows, totally purled rows and some combo rows. learned a few things: that middle section actually needs more knits or purles on the edges to give it shape. it only looks like it has shape now cuz i stretched it out before i took the picture. and the pattern in the right section isn't all that discernable I think because i didn't do enough rows before i went back to the total knit/purl rows. ok i realize all this may mean nothing to the like 2 people (at best) who actually bother to read it, but i know what i mean. lol. and you can just walk away knowing that i experimented and learned.  had to give this to tgp since i used 'her' yarn. now i have to make her another something with the other yarn she picked out. she did the cast on and then said 'now you have to do the other part'. she said this one's going to be a blanket for her baby doll. i told her i'd make her a washcloth and she agreed to that. i'm going to try that diamond pattern again...

what now...

this is just some randomness i whipped up the other night. i wanted to see what K1 P2 (knit 1 purl 2) looked like so i did it for a bit, as usual, it went haywire after a while. i got it somewhat back on track then it went VERY haywire and I decided to just plain ol' knit 'til i ran out of yarn. it was all just practice anyway. li'l abstract, yes? probably use it to clean the bathroom ;) so next, i write a paper. and call it a day. actually, tomorrow i'll probably buy more yarn and keep practicing. it's actually fun. and in my head i actually have other patterns in mind, as in i wonder what this combination will produce or if i want it to look like this, what combination of knits & purls would i need to do. so that's kinda cool. i really do think i might possibly attempt to consider making some Christmas presents for folks - how's THAT for noncommital! *grin* anyway, i think i've gone thru a nice process here, beginning, middle and at least pseudo-end and as such here ends the required journal-esque-ness of this blog. tho i do still think i'll continue to document my progress as far as the hobby goes... if only to upload pics. we shall see...

tackling a pattern: take 2

Here's the second attempt. If you look from the bottom up, you can see how nicely it started out...I was being carful. I had even caught a few problems in the making and was able to avert them or correct them immediately. I went through the whole pattern once and was going to call it a night - and I should have... But then I decided that it'd be small but i'd go through the whole sequence one more time and just finish the piece. I was excited I guess that it had been going well... A few lines in bad things started to happen... I think it's because I was getting tired. I didn't feel like I was being less careful *sigh* but apparently I was. Soooo about halfway thru the sequence, I think, I decided just to finish up before I did too much more damage. I'm disappointed. I know, I know, I juuust started knitting like 5 minutes ago. And I'm cool w/ mistakes and what not, I'm really just bummed cuz the first part went ok then the crash and burn. I should quit while I was ahead - lol. But anyway, there it be. 

so much for that... ;)

it may be because i'm running on li'l sleep but i decided that perhaps a fresh start is in order. I liked the idea of just continuing to work on the same piece until finally I got it to work out. Thought it'd be cool to look at it when it's all done and be able to trace my experience attempting to follow the pattern, blah blah blah - HA. On second thought, how about I just start anew? Yes, let's do that. So, tomorrow night maybe, I'll start over. I'll go that much more slowly, I might have felt the groove a little sooner than I should have, or blinked to long and a stitch got away from me. No idea. But I'll try to go slower so I'll, hopefully, make fewer mistakes and maybe catch them sooner and be able to double back and fix them. I'd done another couple of rows before I quit tonight and even tho I'm watching everything I'm doing, I'd get to the end of the row and there was rogue stitch or two. So, I just have to be more careful and try to see what I'm doing. I think that somehow something's going on at the back of the needle that I'm just not noticing... in any event, i WILL NOT let this pattern beat me!!! lol

now lookie here...

so this is how this came to be - what follows are selections of an im conversation w/ a friend of mine re my latest endeavor... (coping and pasting is doing weird things, forgive the random indenting)

...but i'm no punk! gonna try the crazy one [pattern] ok it's not crazy... but i may be for deciding to do it after 2 weeks of 'knitting'

me - my project went terribly awry and i quit and started over. the second attempt also has some drama but i'm goign to keep going... and see if it can work itself out some kinda way.

   her - knitting?

          me: yeah

                 her - doing the little diamonds?

                 me: yeah

me: if i get good at this people could actually get christmas presents this year.

 

me: potholders...dish cloths...

  lol

  placemats

 her: nope mind is a sweater, olive green

  ;)

 me: HA

 her: start next week

 me: for your 50th birthday

 her: hahahaha

 me: and that's STILL if i start next week

8:49 PM i'm all about the 2D project

 her: ok - well i guess red dishcloths would be ok

  8:50 PM 

me: just updated blog w/ today's efforts
me: someone i REALLY like could get a blanket

 or someone having a baby

  yeah RIGHT!

  big plans...sooo not likely :(

me: REALLY? i casted on how many stitches? 31

  how many are there on the needle right now?41

  41

  my thingy birthed 10 stitches

 her: 31 became 41?

 me: yes

  yes

  yes

10:08 PM what in the world

 her: i think you need to review

 me: i can see where i LOST a couple

  but how on earth am i gaining them?

10:10 PM i mean i know there are mistakes in here. i just can't figure out what creates an extra stitch. that's what i need ti figure out.

10:11 PM 41

  shakes head

10:14 PM back to the drawing board. sorta. going to force this back to 31 and start over

10:15 PM her: lol

 me: but because i'm a lunatic, i'm not going to pick any of the far easier patterns i found. going to make this work darnit!@

  -@

10:16 PM mainly because the others are not that much more invovled than what i already did. trying to maxmize the 'learning' experience for the sake of the assignment, yeah, that's it

k i now have 31 stitches on the needle.

  or not

  wah!

  but i think that was just sleepy math

10:21 PM no, math was fine it was sleepy logic in determining the math necessary - duh *smacks forehead"

10:23 PM her: so is it right or wrong? i'm confused

 me: wrong

  finished doing the row that i thought would correct it. at which point i said there are 31. but then i counted. still too many as a result of faulty logic.

10:24 PM i have corrected the logic. now i must do the true corrected row and THEN i can go to bed. anal retentive/ocd/numbers obsessed people shouldn't knit

10:26 PM her: ha

10:29 PM me: dangit!

  32

  shoot!

  close enough to call it a night tho

so there goes that...some other thoughts - ncreasing stitches - ok so i just saw one but i saw it just too late to go back and fix it. i think that when i put the needle thru i wasn't paying attention and put it thru the wrong area. i could tell becuase a stitch was the wrong color (multi color yarn  and a yellow stitch randomly in the middle of some green stitchs). it was my 4th straight knitted row before i'm supposed to start the patter so problematic but minorly so. moving on to the next thing has helped me see the flaws in the prev steps i didn't notice, so didn't worry about enough to remedy then.

and I've decided that i'm not going to start over (did I say that already?) i'm just going to keep going. if need be i'll do a few plain rows and attempt to start the pattern again.it can be practice for when i make a blanket since that'd mean having a ton of knitting in my hands.