Testing 1 2 3

.
Happy CNY!

I am easily side tracked. I thought I'd try to do two things together by learning magic loop while test knitting Paula McKeever's new mitt pattern. I understand that you need one circ for ML so I went to my Poor Man's needle storage to fish out a 2.75 mm. After opening the flap, I remembered that I recently got this needle set and know that the cord is very flexible. Then I remembered somebody advising me to try out all the needle tips with all the cords because she had one tip with bad threads and one cord with bad threads. I fished out the nedele set and started screwing and unscrewing all the tips and cords. I must admit that I got a little lazy. I tried both tips of one size with all ends of all cords. It was such a tedious task that I ended up trying both tips of each remaining size on only both ends of one of the cords. Yep, Parresseuse is my middle name. Then I realized that the needle set only contained size US4 up to US 9 or 10 or something like that. And what I wanted was US2. Well that didn't work out for the test mitt. So back to my PMNS for a regular circ in size 2.75mm. The longest one I had was 32 inches.

I proceeded to CO 64 sts, split the sts, pinched the cord & pulled it out. Ok, now how do I join in a round when the needle tips are parallel?! When I knit in the round using 2 circs, I just swap the 1st & last sts. Well, I turned my work around so that the half with the working yarn would be in my right hand, and just started knitting my first round. And knit around I went, until I reached the end of my round and found a strand hanging between the beginning of the round and end of the round -- it was 2 inches long!!!

Whoopsie!

Then I started over with a few 2.75 mm pointy sticks (didn't want to risk another ML failure at this point), knit a few rounds and decided that 64 sts was still much too large. I didn't think the ribbing and cable pattern would pull inwards enough to make it fit my small hands.

I've started over a 3rd time. This time using 3.0 mm pointy sticks and 52 sts for the ribbing. The pattern repeat was 11 sts, so 64 - 11 = 53. And there is a 2 st increase after the ribbing section, which would make the target st count 55. I could have co 56 for the ribbing and then reduce by 1 st. I decided to go with co 52 for a snugger fit, and then increase 3 in the last ribbing round. I think this will work out...

In retrospect, I should have known from past experience with this yarn that I should have co between 50 to 56 sts to fit my hand.

Well that's it for now. It's been busy on this end. I did manage to get my eyes examined, it has been a while cough4to5yrscough since my last. The good news is that nothing has really changed. The right is still bad and the left is still worse, but the diopters have remained the same as before. Well, there is one wee little change in axis for one eye. I'm not sure why there is this slight difference. I suppose I could get away with not getting new glasses. However the desire for new scratch-free lenses and an updated frame won out. The downside is that clip-on shades have fallen out of favor which meant having to choose separate prescription sunglasses. This means I have to carry a big eyeglass case for the sunglasses instead of a thin sleeve for clip-on shades. I know, it should be no biggie except that purse real estate is hard to come by when I'm hauling all my "pursy" stuff along with all of Missy's stuff. It'll be about 10 days before my glasses are ready.

Copyright © Smariek Knits 2005-2009. All full copyright rights are reserved by Smariek Knits.

.