I hope everyone had a good weekend. The short people and I huddled in the house as the weather changed drastically. The temperature dropped 30 degrees F on Saturday during which we had rain –> sleet –> snow. Eew. The kids played and I knitted. The next installment in the FLAK (for which there is a new netring) was posted so it was time to finish the second swatch.
I finished it off, washed and blocked it. While this picture is pretty cruddy, the stitch definition is very clear and the yarn isn’t quite that orangey in person. I did cheat and let it dry on the laptop that lives in the kitchen. It is a bit of a brick in that it is OLD, has no cd or floppy, but it does work and it does allow me to get away from the desktop, especially since I added the wireless router a couple of months ago.
Back to FLAK, I like the cables and how they work together. They all make changes on rows that factor with each other. Okay, I know that makes no sense and I’m having a hard time explaining it in my own mind. Maybe an example would be beter, the wave cable crosses on the same row as the 3/3 crosses in the center cables. The honeycomb, braid and baby cable all are active on every row. Halfway through the swatch I was able to put the chart away and just read the cables.
I started the thing using one of those nasty little metal Boye cable needles. While it works, the darn thing was very slippery and would periodically fall out of the work. Not good. I don’t like doing the cables without a needle for anything bigger than a 2/2 switch, especially with a somewhat blunt knitting needle and the tight gauge this pattern is calling for. I dug out a short wood DPN that I used for most of the swatch and into the first of the two saddles. Before sitting down to knit yesterday, I found in my basket ‘o fun a shorter nylon/plastic dpn that worked even better. I finished the second saddle in almost no time. Granted I have a small advantage, I’m small. Mom took the necessary measurements for me on Friday. I have a 14" shoulder width. Awww. Guess that does make me rather petite doesn’t it? So with the width on the center cables section of 7", I needed to make saddles that together measured 7". 3.5" at 28 rows/4" really isn’t all that much knitting. I had one minor mess up on the braid cable, repeating the same row instead of the next action row as I had the distraction of having to pull one biting short person off the other one. It was easily fixed as I hadn’t even finished the row yet. Short people. Ugh.
In other knitting news, I finished up the first of mom’s socks last night watching the season premiere of 24. I so love that show and its nice to see it back. Man did it start off with a bang. Looking forward to two more hours of it tonight. There are very few tv programs where I actually pay attention to them instead of just listening. 24 is one of them and the plain socks were the perfect knitting accompaniment to it. Battlestar Galactica (an excellent episode on Friday night had me on the edge of my seat) and House are the other two shows that I actually seriously stop and watch. Not much knitting during those except for the simple stuff that I can glance at every now and again. I did work on the smoke ring (sorry, no updated picture) Saturday night while watching X-Men on FX. I have to admit, it was more of a listening movie as I worked on the lace.
I’ll leave with some shorty zen:
Craft on.
2 responses so far ↓
1 --Deb // Jan 16, 2006 at 2:23 pm
The orange cables look beautiful . . . but I’m biased toward orange cables right now, anyway . . . I do have some wooden cable needles that look a lot like DPNs, but are wider at the ends and narrower at the center, to help hold the stitches a little better. When I do need to use a cable needle, that’s my needle of choice.
But mostly, I just do without. I know there’s more than one “method” out there, but the one I like best, I slide my right needle into the stitches on the left that wil be knit first. Then, I usually pinch the knitting just below the stitches I’m about to slide off (just in case), take a deep breath, and slide all the stitches off the left needle. Now, I’ve got a few stitches just floating, and some being temporarily held on my right needle. I quickly pick up the stitches dangling there with no needle onto my left needle, and then slide the ones off my right needle back onto left–so that now, all the stitches are on the left needle and ready to knit in the correct sequence, and none has had to wait, unattended for more than a second. I rarely ever drop a stitch this way but the slight risk of it is why I pinch the knitting underneath those about-to-dangle stitches, and then only when they’re going behind the work–for some reason, they tend to misbehave more back there than when they’re in the front where I can keep my eye on them.
Oh, and TV? I’ve never actually seen an episode of 24 because it’s not Mom’s kind of show. I’ve love to see Battlestar Galactica, but would you believe there are THREE other shows on Friday nights at 10:00 that I’m interested in and are “ahead” of BG because I’ve seen them first? (Who knew Fridays at ten was such a hot time slot?) I’ve only seen a couple episodes of House, and liked it, but it’s on something else I normally watch . . .though I can’t think what it is right now!
2 Lola // Jan 17, 2006 at 7:43 am
Try using the big paper clip. Unbend it, first the outer edge and then the inner edge. It will now be in a slanted U-shape; straighten out each edge as much as possible and you’ve got yourself a good cable holder. Slide the stitches onto the short edge and do your cable crossing, then slide the stitches over to the long edge and knit these off.
This gives me a great looking cable and it’s cheap on my wallet as I’m forever losing the cable needles that you get from yarn stores.