Life

has been cutting into my knitting time. It's good. Its good to have friends, and spend time with them. (that is local, everyday friends—vs old friends who have moved away and are far flung!)

It's good to feel useful, and to make a point of visiting the B—its good too, to see visible progress every day. He is still not walking, but he is clearly getting better each time I see him—Not that he hasn't been his old self in some respects—he has managed to work his way through 3 phones in the past 2 weeks!

His fine motor skills (lacking before the stoke) are shot—but he insist he can muscle his way through—and has broken not 1, not 2, but 3 chargers breaking wires, or pulling them apart! It is infuriating--and typical of him.  

Where are pictures of the Lacy Mohair cowl, you might ask? Is it done?

So I went and finished up skein 5, and all of the partial skein, and only had the grafting to do. I plowed ahead, even though I was tired, and it was late. I wanted this project finished, I wanted to move on to something new.

I messed up royally! At this point the graft is clearly biased—and it's no wonder. I came to the end, and found the needle held 8 stitches, but there were clearly 16 stitches to undo from from the provisional cast cast on. Undoing a graft is always a PITA, but mohair makes it worse. I will undo, and fix—but I just didn't have the energy or inclination. (Besides, I had to tuck the work into the freezer—I don't KNOW why (I can speculate) but I do know, it is easier to undo mohair (frog, or tink or unweave a graft) when it is cold.

In the meanwhile, I have been working on my secret sock, and I started my massive bottom up shawl cast on. 4 repeats cast on (I need 90!) Each repeat is 13 stitches, and counting repeats, not stitches.

The cast on has a bit of pattern—so this makes sense. It is a bit tedious (cast on x, bind off Y, cast on again, bind off again, and again, and then repeat the whole deal.  And counting the repeats to the design are the way to go.  The tedious part comes NOW, when I am fresh and enthusiastic, not at the end when I am tired and slightly bored with the project (see paragraphs above where I mention how I screwed up the end of the cowl!)

I know lots of cast on's—but as a general rule, cast on's are straight edges. Which is why shawls are so often knit top down. Its easier to to make a pretty bind off edge.  But this cast on edge is the exception.    Here is a sample of the edge for the sparkly blue shawl. Pretty, isn't it? It's a bear to cast on—90 repeats of 13 stitches—that's 1170 stitches! But by row 7, a manageable 350 or so! But look what you get! Deep lacey points on the edge. As good or better than a lacy bind off. And it's what you start with. As time goes on, the shawl will have fewer and fewer stitches. Easier ever row. Oh joy.