Friday knit fest

Despite the torrential rains here in New Jersey, I drove to Englewood to see the Knit Master genius who has my sweater coat pattern in her head. With the back and one front panel completed, she seemed less skeptical about my knitting prowess. "You knit fast." "Let's measure." But her skepticism was reserved for the precision with which I knit not my speed. She folded and turned my work several times looking for irregularities in the stitches, not believing that my gauge remained true. After she flipped and turned the panels, she proclaimed, "It's good." "Now we do sleeves and you finish other panel at home." She drew out the sleeve pattern and told me to get to work. I stayed a while longer, chatting with two other women - twins. They were both making cream colored bulky wool long coats mixed with mohair. They were stunning and the coats were too!

Knitting with heavy worsted boucle feels like you are weaving pelts. The individual stitches are barely visible. The Knit Master genius took the 'pelts' and basted them together and motioned for me to try it on. She made some adjustments to my "pattern" and told me that, "because you have a drape, we make some places shorter."

Then, out of no where she saw that I had knitted two rows of garter stitch not stockinette. "No, no, this is wrong, you must rip out." So there I was frogging and I knew that I would never be able to find my way back again. But patience and many years of tearful corrections paid off. I successfully took out 4 rows and put back my needles without losing any stitches (Heidi, you would be proud). Take a lesson kids, frogging is good experience, sometimes the only way to learn is by getting it wrong and having to fix it yourself.

After I knitted up from where I made my mistake, I did my bind off careful not to make it too lose and certainly not too tight. Feeling inspired, I pulled out my FO silk/wool boucle scarf. I bought the yarn there a few days ago. I made some adjustments to the Knit Master's recommendation, she suggested that I use 10 1/2 needles, CO 25 stitches and do the whole scarf in garter stitch. She said, "the beauty of the wool is enough, you don't need fancy stitch competing with boucle." But oh no, miss know-it-all-wanna-be-designer me, decided to CO only 15. Then in an attempt to add flourish, I crocheted a lightly ruffled border. You should have seen her face! The look of incredulity as I opened up the scarf gave me no doubt as to what she would say, and she said it - "there is not balance in that scarf, it look homemade."

Dayum, was all I could say, in my head. This is what it looked like before I frogged.

Ok, so it does look so so, but I hadn't blocked it yet and... yeah it does look homemade.

After that I decided it was time to leave. For my trip back home. I have to take 2 highways. But, you know what the consolation is - I must pass by a giant AC Moore. I don't know what the thrill is with these craft supermarkets but I do love looking at all the crazy crafts I could do if I had 9 more hours of leisure time. As I meandered through the yarn section I see this -

And this

So, you know what that means. I must do this -



Need a closer look, check out all of those colors!