My sister-in-law-in-law's (H's brother's wife) Christmas scarf currently looks like this:
Half finished - I've needed a lot of therapy recently.
It is fair to say that the last couple of days have really kicked and full credit should be given not only to the lovely Germolene pink alpaca in the scarf (which is really very soothing to knit) but also to the Tuesday night knitting girls who plied me with chocolate biscuits last night until I felt human again (or rather until I started making cheeky comments at which point they wished they had stopped one biscuit sooner).
The scarf pattern is a Ravelry find and is a free download from here. When I saw it on Ravelry looking for something different it called out to be for C - this is after all a girl who hunted down the last available pink Nintendo DS in Edinburgh so I think I'm on safe ground with the colour and she's always been a girl for a bit of sparkle!
Having indulged in all this therapy it is only right that the universe should seek some form of balance and this morning a ball of yarn got its own back on me. [Warning: those of a sensitive disposition should arrange the tissues and sofa to hide behind at this point - it is Halloween after all].
I think I am fairly safe in announcing that H may perhaps be getting a pair of socks as part of his Christmas bundle. He either won't read the blog or he will read it and knows that he asked for more fluffy socks. Anyway, I digress.... sock number one has been completed in relative secrecy and is currently hiding (down a mitten - shh).
This morning, with a nice long train trip to London lined up I knit a little bit on the Monkey to maintain the cover story and then prepared to cast on. As I knit into the third round of the sock I noticed that although I had got the start lined up, the stripes were going the wrong way. [Bonus point for noticing this before 9am]. I considered the possibilities and fished out the centre of the ball of yarn thinking to knit it inside out to get the striping going the wrong way. [Bonus point for thinking of this rather than chucking the whole thing out of the train window]. I duly wound off to get to the starting point but the stripes were going the wrong way. So I checked the outside of the ball - yes, stripes going the wrong way.... and the inside of the ball; stripes still going the wrong way [ we will not dwell on the number of times I checked this - it was after all still before 9am.] I then poked around in the ball for a bit and noticed that the stripes reversed about three layers down so I started winding.
When I had a ball of yarn about the size of a satsuma wound off my fingers brushed up against a little something. It was a knot (I did tell you you needed a sofa to hide behind). Yes indeed - I know you're all there before me, I had half a ball of yarn going one way, carefully knotted to half going the other way. People of Regia - I am not impressed.
In the end I've undone the knot, hidden the half ball of yarn in another mitten and successfully started the sock. Luckily our story has a happy ending (unless I discover another knot!).
Now then, do I (a) finish the scarf; (b) finish Foxglove or (c) cast on something new?
It's November tomorrow - roll on NaNoSwMo - this year I'm going to do it (largely because I won't be knitting in KSH!)
* This is not to say that this evening's R&R did not include a glass of a very nice white - it did.
The scarf is lovely, I'll be off to have a look at the pattern next. I've had the same experience with self patterning sock yarn, in fact I've had it happen so many times that I swore never to buy another ball.
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