Starting Smith (aka Jess Makes Mistakes Aplenty)

Smith is tragically cute, but it's incredibly fiddly! From the complicated cast on to the spikes, there are plenty of places that your (read: my) knitting can (read: did) go wrong. I want to make it very clear that my mistakes were not the pattern's fault. It's very hot, so my brain is melting. First, I messed up the cast on, but I was okay with that because nobody should be staring at my hedgehog's booty. Then, I was cruising along with the knitting until I realized that my spikes were wrapping around my hedgehog further than they should. Turns out I misread round 9. While you're supposed to knit 1 and then knit the stitches together, I alternated between the two. Whoops! However, I've already attached two sets of spikes, so I do NOT want to frog! Instead, I'll just sew the spikes to wrap all the way around the body, and I'll work the rest of the spikes correctly. That'll look okay, right? Remember, kids, it's not nice to make fun of deformed hedgehogs!

The good news is that I've discovered a few helpful tips to make my Smith more successful!

• Read the pattern correctly. (Apparently I don't take my own advice.)


• Weave in the ends as you go. A little effort now will save you a lot of stress when finished the project!


• Knit the spikes in advance. If you've got space on your needle or have spare needles, you don't have to keep alternating between knitting the body and spikes. In my case, I'm using DPNs, so I was able to knit 4 spikes before going back to the body!
  

Hopefully, these tips will help somebody else avoid hedgehog deformity!

Absentee Knitter Knits Damson

Phew, we've been blogging for a month and I finally have a minute to join in and write a post. For those who don't know, I've been a little busy for the past month with moving ("Where to?", you might ask. Funny thing: both California and East Hampton. Yeah, it was a fun move) and starting my nannying gig. The kids are off to camp, and I have a minute to tell you about my progress on Damson, which I am not surprisingly way behind on.

While everyone else is finishing project numero dos, I'm just finishing up the would-be-garter section of Damson (that I'm doing in stockinette in hopes that my single skein of Tosh Merino Light will be enough). Based on Jess's results, I should be fine with the 420 yards of TML. The benefit of finishing last is that I don't have to be the guinea pig. Hopefully that makes up for the well-deserved tormenting I'm sure to suffer from my fellow bloggers.


So my notes on the pattern and project itself: The pattern is nice and easy. Like everyone else, my stitch count got a little off at one point. I was missing one stitch on one of the ends, so I just did an extra increase once I realized the mistake. It's not even noticeable (woohoo). My other note about my project is that I absolutely LOVE the Flashdance colorway. It seriously gorgeous and possibly the reason I'm totally fine taking my time.Who wouldn't want to drag out the time spent knitting in this stunning colorway?


So, the consolation prize for indulging me with this not-so-helpful post: a few pictures of what you're missing in East Hampton. I'll share more later, but for today here are the hydrangeas that have been keeping me sane while I haven't been able to knit. I sure hope the slideshow works! Update: Click on "Fullscreen" to view the slideshow.

Damson: Catching Simple Mistakes

One of the best things about Damson is that it's such a simple yet elegant pattern. Because of this, there's a lot of very repetitive knitting. I tend to make most of my knitting mistakes on very easy patterns because I simply stop paying attention to what I'm doing. The two problems I've stumbled upon with this pattern are mismanaged yarn overs and keeping track of stitch counts.

When you work the yarn overs correctly, your shawl will radiate out from the cast on edge in a symmetrical manner. Makes perfect sense, right? Well, my first 20 rows or so looked a little more like this:

Why were my wedges uneven? Because my yarn overs were ending up to the left of my stitch markers instead of the right. It can be a bit difficult keeping yarn overs on the correct side of the stitch marker, but it's super important to be vigilant! On my second attempt, I erred on the side of caution and pulled my yarn overs a little tighter. This helped me keep them in the right place.

My second major problem was incredibly silly. I often lost track of which row I was on (despite keeping a tally on my pattern). In fact, I worked the entire first row of the lace section before I realized that I needed to do one more set of increases first. In case you haven't read that far ahead, let me tell you that there's a chart of stitch counts on page 3. Had I realized this, I would have been spared some tinking!

Thankfully, all of my small mistakes have been very easy to fix. I'm sailing through the pattern and am currently on row 98! Here's a peak at my progress.



I think I'll finish the pattern this weekend. Wish me luck!