Thursday, February 12, 2009

What do you mean I'm doing it wrong?

Since I started knitting small diameter in the round (I have yet to knit anything large, ie a sweater, in the round.), I have had a few problems.  I started with a sock using 5 DPNs (that's double pointed needles to my non-knitting readers).  It was going fine with that method except all those needles were annoying and no matter what I did, I still had ladders, or spaces, in my knitting where one needle ended and the next began.  I knew I'd have to learn some way to fix this or I'd never be able to make  sleeve for a sweater without having to make it flat and seam it. :(

Recently I tried another method for circular knitting.  It's where you use two sets of circular needles, which are two knitting needles connected together by a thin cord.  I did ok with this method.  I think I would've even liked this method had it not been for my cheap needles which had cords which were way to stiff.  Here is a progress shot of my knitting by this method.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="385" caption="Toast on 2 circular needles"]Toast on 2 circular needles[/caption]

The pattern is Toast.  It's a great, simple project and I love my first arm warmer.  Since I've only finished the one, I've just been wearing it around the house, rocking it Michael Jackson style.

Since I was unable to fix my ladder problem with this method.  I decided to knit the second using yet another style of circular knitting.  It's called Magic Loop and you use one set of circular needles that have a longer cord.  It's easy to do, but not as easy to explain.  So far, so good.  I think I've finally fixed the ladder problem and I should be finished with my second arm warmer in no time.

I'm not 100% happy though.  Today I came to a realization.  I'm doing all these methods wrong.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Does this look funny to you?"]Does this look funny to you?[/caption]

This is the inside of my arm warmer.  In the other picture I flipped my knitting right side out before taking the picture.  This picture is what it looks like while I'm knitting.  I find out today that when most people knit in the round it is NOT inside out.  All this time I just assumed inside out was how things went and when complete you just turned them right side out.   I pretty much figured out how to fix it and even did a round of this right side out, but I found the cord was all in my way and I messed up because of it so I just went back to my old way.  It works.  I suppose I should learn to do it correctly though just in case inside out will not work for something.  I suppose it serves me right for insisting on learning how to do everything myself.  Loops always tells me to ask people questions and have them show me stuff, but I always prefer to figure it out in my own way.

One more thing before I go.  I have a Print Store on deviantArt where all my photographs are for sale.  I haven't actually sold any, but I buy small versions of everything and since my kitties are so cute, I had to buy magnets of a picture of each of them.  I finally received them earlier this week and they're up on the fridge.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Awww! Cute Kitties!"]Awww!  Cute Kitties![/caption]

Too Cute!!!

1 comment:

Loops said...

Yay for 80s arm warmers! ;-)

The Kitties look very cute hunny :)