On knitting

I was lucky to acquire a couple of beautiful hanks of sock yarn yesterday. I was at my knitting group ---- yes, you read right 'my knitting group'!! I have joined a knitting group  joolsywoolsy  which meets on alternate Sunday mornings.

.....back to the yarn. My original intention was to knit this yarn into some socks but when I got it home, sniffed it, felt it, looked at the colour in the bright glorious light of day AND discovered that it was produced in Peru, I decided that I needed to wear this yarn around my neck not on my feet.
I felt slightly overwhelmed at having yarn made in Peru in my hands - it was nearly as good as the first time I set foot on Roman soil - a life changing experience.
Fortunately I had already found a pattern worthy of this jewel that I wanted to knit on ravelry. Have a look, it's gorgeous.  Annis
Having made this decision I sat on the bed with the skein of yarn draped around my knees and wound it into a ball because I had to start Annis as soon as possible.

Picture this - finally in bed with a cup of fresh tea, knitting needles of correct size (6mm!! my hands aren't big enough for those mothers!) freshly wound yarn  and the pattern. I discover that this shawl is knit from the bottom up and requires a 363 stitch cast on. I won't go into the horrors of casting on 363 stitches, suffice it to say that after a couple of false starts I was off, using a cable cast on. This is a cast on where you knit the stitches onto the needles and is quite stretchy, so is well suited to lace knitting. It also affords the poor individual doing the job a degree of control (which hundreds of loose cast on stitches don't) and time to count the wretched stitches.

Triumphantly looking at the lovely cast on stitches  an hour later I decided that I could tackle the first row of the pattern as well (at 11pm after much frustration and concentration doing the cast on - why?). I got to the end of the first row and discovered a few spare stitches, no problem I just dropped them off and turned around to purl back. Picked up the knitting this morning to do 'just one row before I get up' and discovered a small mistake about a third of the way along the row. Gripped with terror and feeling an infantile urge to spit the dummy thoroughly, pull the knitting off the needles and decide that I didn't want the shawl after all, I take a long sip of the tea and decide that
a. I don't want to pull it all out and start again, my mind isn't that strong
b. I will knit the mistake into the shawl so skilfully that no one will ever notice ;-)

I proceed. Get two rows done, discover that it is 11.30am and race out of bed ready to embrace the day.

More to come.

innocent looking knitting