Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Is it possible to suffer from knitter's block?

I'm here to tell you that it is.

Ok, I've been quiet lately. Me being lazy along with frustrated with knitting and life in general have caused me to over look sharing my current life events with all of my favorite readers. You poor, poor people! I know you have been crying buckets full of tears, so I'll correct the injustice and ramble on and on today!

Yay for you!

First, where have all my pretty stitches gone? After my last few projects I felt relatively capable of taking on any project that came my way (minus sweaters, of course). So I decide to start a few things, and have spent the week frogging my arse off.

First - Reversible Lace Ladders Scarf. It's super pretty. You can find it on Heartstrings. I ordered silk lace yarn from my friends a the Loopy Ewe, and have determined a few things. Wanna hear about it? Good.

  • 1100 yards of yarn for $40 sounds like a freakin' steal. When you get it home and realize that it is thinner than embroidery floss, you realize that the joke is on you. Trying to wind 1100 yards of dental floss is not fun or relaxing. I managed to wind about 75% of it before I had to stop. (I am currently dreaming of my own ball winder)

  • Because the yarn is a bit finicky (to put it nicely) I decided last night to practice on larger yarn. The pattern uses a funky little technique for it's yarn overs. For a yarn over in conjunction with a k2tog, you bring the yarn to the front and knit through the back loops. Reverse it for the purls. My stitches look like utter crap-o-la. Seriously.

  • I emailed the author to see if she thought I could use traditional YOs in place. She said yes, but that the size of the YOs will be different.

  • I came home today and tried large yarn and managed to do ok. I think my main problem is how the stitches look... I'm going to figure this one out even if I go blind doing it!

Wanna see? You know you want to....

Oh what a party pooper I am!!! Actually, I just couldn't get a good picture, so I figured I would show you the big cards I had to make so that I wouldn't get lost in the pattern. Yes, it's only two rows, but for some reason, I couldn't keep my place... So I wrote it really big.

Second, I've been working up a mesh lace pattern with some chunky weight linen. I just wanted a nifty item to run along the top of my shower curtain, and because my bath is done in red and green, it's going to be perfect. It's such a simple pattern and I can't get more than three rows without messing it up!!

What the hell is wrong with me??? I've spent all week cursing patterns and needles, and there has got to be something wrong with me, for real. Now the scarf I can get, but the mesh?? Come on!! I've lost my mind and and it's been replaced by knitter's block.

And work? Yeah... There has been some restructuring in my company, and we have all been re-aligned in one way or another. Not too bad but when someone tells you that you are going to do someone elses' job, including your own but offers no guidance on how the process should go, it's frustrating as hell. Like stabbing at yarn in the dark....

Kind of like how my recent projects are going. Blindly stumbling around trying to figure out what in the sam hell is going on!

Can you tell I have really lost it? My work and my knitting are becoming parallel universes! I'm going to have to get my stars back into alignment somehow. I think there is a bottle of wine in the fridge....

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