knitting update (Fawkes in Sawkes - yes, I did just go there :-P)

Because I know you all, especially those of you who were at Skiffy tonight, care deeply:  after several (okay, many) fuckups at what was always, interestingly, the end of the second half of the needle (sometimes the first and sometimes the second and, on one occasion, both), I finally conquered the fourth repeat of the sodding chart pattern and am now ready to do the blessedly simple heel flap.

So I'm going to bed.  (I'll do the heel in the morning.)


The thing about errors is this.  It's true, what ellen_fremedon says:  if there's one extra stitch in one row (or two or three, however many before you notice) and you just fix it on the fly with an extra decrease instead of tinking back and doing it right, yes, okay, in a freaking sock nobody's going to know.  And it's true what I say, which is that I will know; but, let's be honest, I'm capable of letting it go.  Really I am.  On the Embossed Leaves socks I realized after the first repeat that I'd made a mistake in the first row (of sixteen); and I realized halfway down the foot that I'd been consistently making a mistake in about the tenth row.  I wasn't going to rip the fucker back to the cuff, which is what I'd have had to do to get it right -- I did make a note of what I'd done so I could do the same slight errors on the second sock and make them match, but I don't think that's unreasonable at all.  Even better, on the first Bellatrix sock I picked up one less stitch on one side of the instep gusset than on the other, which I only realized when I was halfway done with the decreases and I didn't have the same number of stitches on each side.  Know what I did?  I skipped the decrease on one side on the next row, evening the sides up, and carried on, and on the second sock I picked up the same number of stitches on both sides, so in fact those socks aren't precisely the same.  It didn't even take particular strength of will to do this.  I really am okay.

But Fawkes tonight was driving me batty (as you may have noticed).  I think I was doing an extra yarn-over, for the record, in most of the cases, although the time it was on both needles it was a failure to psso.  I could have fixed it relatively easily every single time by just knitting two together an extra time, but the point is, as I said, that one of these times I'll be making a sweater or something bigger, more intricate, etc., where having the number of stitches I bloody well intend to have actually matters a great deal, and I deserve to know that I can follow a fucking 12x15 chart and get it right.  Tinking back two and a half rows three or more times is, I hope, inspiring me to get it right the first time in future.  I mean, really.

memo

Dear Edible Arrangements commercial:

The word bouquet does not rhyme with "okay".  Please re-record the voiceover and have her pronounce the first syllable "boo".  Thank you so much.

regards
Fox

a note

If you are wearing a cotton skirt when you get comprehensively rained upon (and maybe hold out your arms Shawshank-style in it, because come on, it's not like you're going to be any less wet if you don't), that skirt will get waterlogged.  Your shirt, which has at least 2% spandex, will be less wet, but nevertheless quite clingy, but your skirt will in fact require you to hand your beer to insptr_penguin (or some other nearby associate) when you get back under the roof so you'll have both hands free to wring it out.  This will cause general merriment.

Also, wet clothes are cold, even if the air temperature is above 70 degrees.

I am in dry (and thus warm!) pajamas now, and going to bed.  Yay baseball.


OH ALSO I have not watched Doctor Who yet because I was at the baseball and it is only now 64% downloaded. So I also haven't read 60% of my flist tonight, because I looked right past those entries when I was catching up. Heh. See y'all in the morning.