Hello, my name is Amie, and I spent 5 hours yesterday screwing up knitting. And four hours today.

I know it's Sunday, but here I am at work, so I feel like I should be posting.

Actually, I was at work yesterday, but I didn't post... and it felt like cheating, somehow.

I'm just here to babysit some fickle (and temporary) equipment. Can't leave the station alone right now, in case we get booted off the air. It didn't happen for two weeks straight, and then the equipment passed out around 8 this morning (requiring me to literally punch two buttons to get us back on the air) so damn if the boss wasn't right and we did need someone here...

I brought some of my handspun (the red merino/angora I dyed at Jen's) to start those mittens I had the dream about.

Now I've never done mittens, so that in itself was a challenge, because I so rarely follow patterns that this really does consist of me sitting down with some DPNs and yarn and trying to make something roughly hand shaped. I decided I was going to do fingerless mittens, so that I can still spin and knit while wearing them at Rhinebeck this weekend. Cuz they'll be done.

Yeah, I know. It's a lovely dream, though, don't wake me up.

And for goodness sake, if you do wake me up, don't remind me of what an idiot I am.


Apparantly I thought I was more decisive (or less stubborn) than I actually am. You see, I have found the cable I want to put on the mittens. (Cable 16.14 from the Harmony Guide to Aran and Fair Isle Knitting)

This particular cable is 24 stitches wide. Using the yarn I have spun, I would have to be a close descendant of King Kong to have hands that would fit gloves done on 48 stitches. I'm working on 32 stitches, which would put one third of the cable on my palm. Not so great a look. Sort of takes the whole "cable" concept right out of the picture, right?

Now, an intelligent knitter would calmly look for another cable.

Who am I?



I tried every possible alteration of cable 16.14 one could possibly imagine. I tried splitting it in half, I tried splitting only the background stitches, I tried splitting only the cable stitches... And then of course there's getting the right fit for the glove itself (yes, a gauge stitch would solve this, what do you think I am, some kind of logical being? I'm just gonna knit the stinking thing 30 times until it fits.) I have knit the first three rows of this cable so many times the angora part of the yarn no longer looks like it was spun, but is sticking out more than it does while still attached to the rabbit.


After all that screwing up yesterday, I spent an hour today looking at other cables. I finally found one that is 15 stitches wide. Which, oddly enough, could fit on the back of my hand. I don't like it as much as my first choice, but I do rather like it, and again, it fits, so there.

So I promptly started knitting on that Combination-style. Which twists the stitches. And I promise you I went an entire round thinking "how weird is it that all of my stitches are twisted" before I realized that they weren't, but I was twisting them while thinking that by knitting through the back loop.


But now, I think I'm on the right track.

So there's my entry for today, so I've at least accomplished one thing.

Thank God for small miracles.

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Edited 2 hours later:

I'm now about an inch, maybe two, from finishing the first fingerless mitten (except for the thumb). I just tried it on.

It took all the strength I had NOT to frog the whole damn thing. Someone tell me it will look better without the Frankensteinian look of DPNs coming out from every angle. Quick.

It's really lovely soft yarn. Maybe I'll just make a scarf and have cold hands.