The Fixer

So Saturday night, the husband and I were out to dinner when all of a sudden I see these little dots of light across the room. Turns out that one of the patrons had on a pair of glasses not unlike these to read the menu. I don't know about you, but I have been knitting in bed quite a bit lately, and the lighting in our bedroom is not good at all. The bedside lamps are both to dim and too short to help much. I do have an LED book light, but there is nowhere to clip it when I knit. One of the SWAG items for Sock Summit is a different kind of clip-on light which, for $6.00 is cheap enough to give a try. My friend Liz has an over-the-ear version not unlike this one. When camping at fiber festivals, I sometimes knit in my tent wearing my headlamp, but then I end up with a big strap-mark on my forehead. (Since I camp alone, no one will see it, so I'm not sure why I care.) I suppose instead of gadget hunting, I should just buy taller, bright bedside lamps and dispense with the problem once and for all, right?

It seems like the knitting I've been doing for the past two days is all about fixing, so I'm not really getting ahead of the game.

I decided I could not live with the funky stitches on the Chickami, so I ran lifelines. After picking and ripping, I determined that grafting was not necessarily going to make me happy, either, since the single row of grafted stitches was likely to be at a slightly different gauge, and when you are working in a solid color mostly cotton yarn, it's pretty visible. So, I've decided to put it back on the needles and knit down from the upper lifeline using the yarn from the bottom section. Let's hope that works.

Yesterday, when picking up my nearly finished Green Gable, I noticed one wonky little stitch just under the lace panel. Since I'd already bound off the bottom, I had to undo the edge and ladder back to fix the splitty stitch. (I'd missed two plies of the Cotton Fleece, and the stitch was all scrawny as a result. It bugged me to no end.) That bit of surgery was actually a pretty quick fix, and all I have left is the second sleeve cap.

Yesterday I also cast on for Orion's Sock. This was a case of "I should have listened to myself." The pattern is toe-up, and calls for a cast-on of 28 stitches, 14 on each needle. I thought to myself, "Hmmm...when working cuff-down, I usually decrease to 16 or 20 stitches, 8 or 10 on each needle. This seems like a shallow, wide toe." Guess what...it was. Since I'd only knit one pair toe up before, I didn't question the pattern, at least not enough to change things from the outset. I was in denial for a few inches of toe and foot, then took an inevitable trip to the frog pond. I think I'm going to cast on again tonight and follow my own plan until I get to the correct number of stitches around.

The question of whether one is a process or product knitter comes up a lot. I've come to realize that for me, I can't have a product I'm happy with unless I complete the process to my own satisfaction. Which reminds me, there was something about the bind off on the Green Gable that was a little off...