WIP: Pink-tada

I’m back in the States, and it feels good! Except it’s boiling hot in Houston already. At least I got to wear my handknits in London!

In other news, my binge at Loop did give me the material to start my Pinctada. I haven’t done any decent photographs, but here’s a camera phone shot:

This is my second attempt– the first one was a hot mess. The pattern calls for 4/1 Left cables and 4/1 Right cables. I figured they were knit the same… By slipping 4 stitches either to the front or back. I was super wrong. I couldn’t figure out why I had these awful stretched out stitches on the fronts of my cables:

I was so frustrated… A whole 22-row repeat was frogged, and I re-did my cast on, this time really reading the directions. My current version looks much better, except now I’m into repeat 3 and just noticed I made the same stupid mistake on the first cable on the first repeat! Auuuugh! I’m not ripping it out. I’ll chalk it up to imperfection and be happy with it.

Exceptttt I have another mistake. The bubbles along the sides are off by half a repeat, so I’m “closing” one circle as I’m “opening” the other! It’s not noticeable on the FO, just frustrating.

I’m mostly frustrated because I haven’t had to seriously frog a project in quite awhile, and although I was definitely due for a good curse-and-rip, it makes me question my skills and instincts. I definitely got way too comfortable with the pattern and paid for it.

To top off the already irritating experience with the pattern, I started getting some soreness in my left thumb as I was knitting. A combo of the Tosh and metal needles took its toll on my hands, and 4 hours of airplane knitting have made me hesitant to pick up the project again. So what did I do?

I changed scales and worked on something amusing to get my humor back:

I still have almost a full ball of Wollmeise 100% Superwash in “Neptun” from my Sultan Cardigan, and it’s nice to be able to use some of it on fun little stuff like this, which will get way more use than my cardigan, unfortunately.

Alright… maybe I’ll go give that Pinctada another chance. Don’t forget to win some teal yarn of your own!
– YX