LoopyKnits

The good news in my current small project on the needles is that I’ve discovered (woo-hoo!) that it is indeed possible to knit cables while using circulars. It’s *exactly* like doing it on straight needles, which makes perfect sense now that I think about it. The only things I’ve had to change on the Beehive Hat pattern are:

• Eliminate the two stitches at the beginning and end of each row that are not part of the cable pattern (they were for the seam, I guess)
• Instead of working even-numbered rows in purl, I work every row in knit since I’m on circulars.

Just so I don’t screw things up since I’m making changes to the original pattern, I made a list of each row and what to do on it in an Excel spreadsheet and am highlighting my progress. I had to do something, since the instructions told me what to do on rows 1 and 5, then all even rows up to 8, then special instructions for rows 3 and 7. Then repeat. (Oh, no, there was just no getting there from here without a map. If I’m driving and the directions to a new place involve more than two turns, I have to make a list.)

My obsessive-compulsive drive to get organized is thwarted on a daily basis (usually by my own blunders), but I made a valiant effort with this pattern.

I’ve also figured out a way to keep my row counter with me on my circulars without creating a too-wide space between stitches. I made a marker out of a piece of scrap yarn in a darker color (just a piece of yarn tied in a circle) and tied the row counter onto the end of the yarn. Darn, aren’t I smart. (Bet a 100 of you have thought of that before. But it was a fresh idea to me!)

*pause*

I have stopped blogging momentarily to listen to my younger daughter play a song on her pink Barbie-brand guitar from Wal-Mart.

It was “Jingle Bells,” here in June. She played the same note for each word in the song, although she did change her voice to conform to the actual song. (This is just like the “I’m Focusing On My Life” song she wrote earlier this year, which she always ends by showing her choreography, complete with handclaps and leg movements.) Sometimes it’s hard to be a mom without laughing so hard you pee on yourself a little.

In blogging news, I’ve brought another person into the fold, in my own Borg-like fashion. (Michelle, you will be assimilated.) I suggested to a pregnant friend that she start a baby blog for her soon-to-be-here bouncing baby boy. We started out with basic blogging tools but before we finished, she had signed up for a domain name, gotten website hosting, joined Blogger.com and also downloaded the Picasa2 and Hello software. And I’ve passed along the links to dotPhoto.com for her photo hosting and pointed her to the FTP freeware I use, FreshFTP. Welcome to blogging and website fun, gal-pal! (Note to readers: That “Michelle” website link may not be active for a few days as she plays with templates and such. Or longer, if bouncing-baby-boy arrives sooner than expected.)

Technorati Tags: Beehive Hat, cable knitting on circulars, children’s music, Caitlyn, knitblog, LoopyKnits.com, Carolyn Bahm

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 16th, 2005 at 9:04 pm and is filed under My Family, My Knitting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.