Nutkins and Knitting Disasters

There has been no update for a while.  Why?  Because every knitting project seemed destined to be an ill-fated disaster.  I made absolutely zero progress.  My Nutkin sock was too small, which really sucked, so I had to rethink that.  Then my Leaving Cowl just turned out to be a series of issues all it's own, which had me scrapping them both and starting over.

So, let's start with the Leaving Cowl.  I started this project because Sable suggested we do a KAL, though she started and finished hers long before I even cast on.  I think it's more like a matching project kind of thing.  She offered to get me the needles and insisted I'd need the 29" cable.  Well, it was too long, and by a lot.  I probably would have knit it on a 16", to be honest, and that's what I'm going to make it on when I finally get the right needles.  That was one big frustration, though I kind of fudged it with doing kind of a modified, one-sided magic loop.  It was super frustrating and I eventually got to the point where I just gave up.  Besides, I wasn't sure I liked the way it looked.  It was almost too snug.  It's too bad because it was starting to look pretty good too!

I was thinking the whole thing would have a lot more drape to it, given the way it turned out on Sable's project, but as you can see, it really doesn't drape much at all.  It would be a pretty snug little collar.  I wasn't sure I liked it and considered going with one more chart repeat, but after having seen it on other people's project pages, I think I might go back to the five I used across.  It looks pretty good and fits close enough to the same as everyone else's.  It makes it more like a turtle neck that way.  Of course, I'm not sure.  I'm never sure on these kinds of things.  I might just go with the six and see how it goes.  Of course, I do keep being reminded that a lot of people barely have the yarn to complete the project, and using a much more yarn consuming edge on the whole thing, I might want to take that into consideration as well.  If I don't have the yarn to finish, it would be a shame to have to rip it all out and start all over again, even if I could whip it up real easy in a few hours.  It didn't take me long to get where I got, but those needles were intolerable to work with.  It was much too fiddly.  I'm just going to get a new set of needles and work from there.

Then there were my Nutkin socks.  Let me tell you, that was a disappointment!  When I couldn't fit them on I decided I would just bump everything up to the next needle size.  At first I hated it.  The yarn wasn't knit as tightly as I wanted it   The color pooling got a little weird too (not that you can tell from the side shown in the picture).  I didn't think I was going to like it and I fought the urge to rip the whole thing out and start over, yet again, this time with the smaller needle and a larger stitch count.  I really didn't want to do it.  It didn't require much changing to add a higher stitch count, but it's more work, and then there's figuring the numbers on the short row heel.  It's a lot of work that I really wasn't interested in doing.  For once I just wanted a project to go smoothly.  With all of the things going on in my life right now, something easy that I can knit while watching television sounded ideal.  Of course, the pattern is simple enough that I could just fall right into the routine, but the heel wouldn't be something I could do rather simply while I sat in front of the television.  That was going to require more attention as I tried to remember to use my math, not the math in the pattern.  I decided to keep going and see how it turned out.

It's not the tight gauge I prefer with knit goods, but I'm pretty happy with the results.  So far the fit looks amazing, and since I'm working on circulars instead of DPNs, I'm able to keep fitting it as I go.  I guess I have a high instep because I keep having problems with the heel and the top of my foot.  It happens with shoes all the time too.  However, this is working out just the way I wanted it to!

At this angle you can see a little more of what I mean about the color pooling though.  One side across is really bright stripes, the other is a slow spiral up of darker colors.  I wasn't sure I was going to like it, but it started to grow on me.  I wasn't thrilled with the way the fabric was knit, not tight enough, until I tried it on and saw it stretched over my leg.  Now I'm pretty happy with it, so we're going to see how it goes up through the foot.  Keep your fingers crossed.  I may have a finished sock to go on display before too long.  It usually takes me a couple days to make a single sock, so hopefully by next week's update I'll have more to report!