Knitting in Combat Boots

My knitting group is a group of enablers.

It's not necessarily a bad thing; it just gets me into situations like this.

For years, I've stayed away from double pointed needles. They're tricky and bothersome and confusing and have the unerring tendency to slide right out of the knitting. I've made do with sewing up the sides of flat knit items and using round needles.

Well, my knitting group peer pressured me into trying DPNs again. And gave me the advice and encouragement I needed to actually make it work. I knit up a little bag and then I knit up a couple little bunny nuggets.

And now, I'm working on my first pair of gloves - the Queen Of Diamonds from KnitPicks.

This is a grand thing, really. I've had the needles and yarn for this pattern for three years now, but I couldn't manage the needles. Now I can.

However, I've just gotten to the eyelet rounds on the hand of the right glove and I'm a bit baffled. I've placed three stitch markers (one at the beginning of the row and one immediately after and one on the next needle) and yet the instructions for row 15 are "k to marker, SM, k14, k2tog, yo, k to end." Well, says I, knit to which marker?

I might hit up a knitting group for this later.

The shawl was finished about a week and a half ago. And I took and uploaded the pictures this weekend, but I'm a little lazy about updating.

I really like this shawl - 10 days from start to finish and pretty to boot! It keeps my shoulders warm, but is light as air. Win!

( Pictures! )

I think I've fucked up the border of the shawl. I'm not sure. The nupps are making it impossible for me to read my own knitting.

My current plan - since I'm about a third of the way through the border - is to knit through to the end. I'll keep my life lines in. If it looks wonky when it's done, I can rip down to the body of the shawl (and cry a lot). If looks fine, I can keep it.

I have ripped out twelve rows of lace (all of yesterday's work, I am so upset) because the nupps were all off. Happily, I purled loosely at the end of the body, so it wasn't a chore to get the stitches back on the needle, like it was last time. But, seriously, twelve rows of lace. That's pain, I tell you.

I've discovered a new skillset I'm gaining from my life in the crafting world.

I'm beginning to be able to read the words for "yarn" and my favored fiber types (like alpaca) in multiple languages. Generally, they're educated guesses, based on surfing foreign websites and I'm not always entirely sure what language I'm looking at.

For example, this morning, I've been checking out Norskflid.no, a presumably Norwegian website. It carries "Garn kvaliteter" in subsections things like "alpakka" and "ullgarn" and "Vev og broderigarn." I'm not entirely sure what the last one it. "Bomullsgarn" looks like it might be a cotton-type? Maybe a plant-blend? *squints at pictures* I still don't know what "Vev og broderigarn" is. All of the yarns in that subsection are really fine...

According the internet "vev" is loom and "og" is and. Maybe "veg od broderigarn" are yarns for weaving?

I'm primarily intending this as a knitting blog, however I'm usually pretty slow with both my needles and my camera. I have more UFOs than I generally know what to do with and the camera is never around when I've finished blocking.

So I'll probably use this for other things as well, perhaps cooking. I intend to venture into sewing this summer as well. Real life can also have its place, especially if any of my real life friends end up on here.