WIP: Wrist Warmers
Last week, I attempted to continue with Andrew’s jumper (a Sirdar pattern I’m knitting in a lovely marbled black/grey shade of Denim Chunky) that’s using 7mm needles. And Gods, did it hurt. My glass-infested hand had major issues with this — no matter what I did, I kept brushing the area where the glass is. And I had to rest after every few rows. In the end, I managed to make some headway — holding the needles in a particular position meant I was no longer catching the area (despite the protective dressing and bandage, it’s still painful and liable to be nudged). However, this change in position meant my fingers were aching after just a few rows. And so I put the knitting away. :(
Yesterday, though, I had a brainwave: I would try smaller needles. Over the weekend I’d obtained a copy of the Freedom Spirit pattern book, and in it is a pattern for some rather nice wristwarmers — knitted up on 4mm needles! Given I have two balls of Freedom Spirit (shade 515, “Destiny”) I could try knitting these up as a mini project, and see if they hurt my hands as much. What’s more, if successful, I could use them to hide the bandage!
And so, I found my 4mm needles and cast on. A few hours later, I was happily knitting along — the thinner needles were definitely easier to handle than the larger ones, and it’s a real Goddess-send! Even more amazing is how well the yarn knits up — I knew it was self-striping, but it is rather beautiful when it all comes together. I find myself itching to complete just one more row, honest, just so that I see how the colours develop next. :)
So far, I’ve done about four hours on these (two last night, and about the same again tonight at my knitting circle), and these are coming along beautifully. And they don’t hurt, either! Victory! Here they are as of the four-hour mark (you can click on the image for a larger one, if you want to see the colour-changing stripes more closely):
Note to self: get better photos/scans in future.
I have a family function on Sunday. It would be really nice if I could get these finished before then, so that I can wear them and hide the ugly dressing… LOL. Here’s hoping! :)
Sorting out the Stash…
I have been having a lot of fun recently — my right hand appears to have a piece of glass within it (from an encounter with a window almost four years ago), which is now making itself known. As such, I’m now on pain meds and have to wear a padded dressing and bandage to protect the part of the palm where the glass is located, until I get a date for an operation to remove the glass. This has meant that knitting and cross stitch have not been easy. :(
Thus, I decided the other night that if I couldn’t knit or cross stitch easily at the moment, I would damn well do something with my crafts. And so, I began to sort through all my knitting stash. Now, granted, it was slow going as my dominant hand currently looks like this:
Not to be deterred, I made as much progress as I could — and in the end I worked until gone 4am! But even so, it was worth it. Here’s where I was up to after I’d pulled everything out of the storage area under the stairs, and segregated it all into piles. If you like, you can click on this image for a larger version:
That’s a lot of stash, but not as much as I expected to be honest, so it’s not that bad. Of course, Andrew was amused when he saw it (though what he was thinking when even more arrived in the mail today, I don’t know… LOL!). He gently suggested that perhaps I should get through as much of this as possible before buying yet more, and at that point I wondered if I should explain to him about pattern books and the concept of yarn fetish, and decided to give that up as a bad job. So I just continued sorting through it all, and by the end of it I had everything neatly catalogued and organised, and then stored back under the stairs in a much more stable and trouble-free manner! I even managed to get a sheet together detailing how much of which yarns I had, their colours/dyelots, tensions, quantity, and whether I had allocated them to a particular pattern/gift recipient. Whoo!
After that, though, came the patterns… And oi, I didn’t know I had so many patterns. By the time I was done, I had filled four lever-arch files (again nicely organised into categories, and alphabetised within those!). Hoewever, I did find some gems — such as a pattern book I almost bought that day (but thankfully didn’t) and several patterns which have been moved up the “next projects” list accordingly.
So yea, that wasn’t a bad waste of a few hours. Just got to do the same with all the cross stitch stash at some point… :p