Friday, May 7, 2010

Has anyone seen my brain?

Well, if Skew didn't teach me that my brain is not functioning at full capacity, the Abbey (by Lisa Grossman) is apparently going to. I love the Tsock Tsarina, and the tsocks usually are so abundantly clear that I just jump right in and happily knit along.

I finished Skew. I made so many mistakes. I knit the foot too long, and ripped back. Past the foot, there are two mistakes in there somewhere that I decided to just leave. At one point, I would have had one too many stitches if I had done the increase that should have been done. So I skipped it. At another, I would have had one too few if I'd done the decrease. Skipped that. And, yes, the worry that I wouldn't have enough yarn was correct - I couldn't do 1.5 inches of ribbing. But .675 inches works for me. I need to tighten my kitchener and weave in ends, but they look fine. As long as you don't look close enough to find the two mistakes, which I didn't! I'm incredibly happy with the end result, but they took way too long. Way too much struggle. (Of course now I can pretty much recite the pattern from memory...)

Having freed up my 1's, what else was I supposed to do but start in on the tsocks with gargoyle on the tippy top? Yes, gargoyles. I must have gargoyles. First, though I have to grow a hyacinth and build a cathedral. No problem. Simple pattern stitch on the hyacinth. The whole foot is a hyacinth. And it all starts with a toe. A toe whose instructions should have been abundantly clear to me. And they weren't. I had to chart the darned thing. And I struggled to do the chart! Where is my brain?!?! If someone out there finds it, please send it home. Maybe feed it some chocolate chip cookies first. And then promise it I'll make it no-bakes when it gets here!