Frog Report

frog: to unravel a knitted garment. Also frog stitch v., to intentionally rip out a seam, and n., an intentionally ripped seam.

The following items are no more:


Afghan  if you can't finish something in 10 years -- it isn't meant to be finished.
Lace Scarf after knitting 200 rows and only having 20 rows to show for it -- it isn't meant to be finished.


Frogging is hard to start and a relief to finish.

Happy knitting, er frogging!

Convertible Mitten Update -- Thumbs Down

The convertible mitten project is languishing in a bag as other obligations (work) and passions (MHFV) have taken priority over knitting this week. Thankfully, I do have a long train commute out of the city everyday and was able to get a little bit of work done on the mitten thumb. It was, however, all for naught as I soon found out I made a huge miscalculation on the number of stitches that I needed to leave live for the thumb. By the time I had knitted half way up the thumb, I realized that you could have put 3 thumbs in the opening. Of course it looked ridiculous. So much for "winging it."

It is errors in judgement like this that make me appreciate website forums like Knitting Paradise. I was able to quickly get a suggestion from another knitter on how to correct this problem. I am getting lots of practice picking up stitches with dpns. I picked up a row of knitting as close to the original live stitches as possible and frogged down to that point. I then tinked back to the original live stitches.

My next step was to use the kitchener stitch to close up some of the stitches in the palm.  I have never used the kitchener stitch on any project, so I hit YouTube and watched a video by theknitwitch. The video was easy to follow and the repair job turned out better than I expected. I had a rather difficult time because the stitches were a bit stretched and they didn't smooth out really well. The lesson learned here is to use a waste yarn that is not bigger than the yarn in the project. I will obviously have to do the same thing to the second mitten as it has the exact same problem. At least I was not knitting the mitten thumbs two-at-a-time!

Happy Knitting!

Have Yarn -- Will Travel.

Lion Brand Wool Ease Scarf

One of the nice things that I have found is that knitting travels well. I have been knitting occasionally on my daily commute into Chicago.  My latest travel project is this simple 3 X 3 ribbed scarf. I found this unfinished object ("UFO") in a drawer and have been traveling with it in my backpack. The yarn is a wool blend by Lion Brand and is so soft and fluffy that I find it comforting to work with. I am not sure what relaxes me more -- just the action of the knitting itself or the comforting fuzziness of the yarn.

I am leaving for a conference tomorrow. The DH has decided to come with me, so it is great that I will be able to knit when he is driving. I dislike driving so hopefully with a 12 hour trip each way, I will get about 18 hours of knitting done. That means I should be able to finish this project and restart my mittens.

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Yes. . . the mittens. The lovely cuff that I shared in an earlier post, I will be frogging that today and beginning over. After I got started with the hand part of the mitten which is in stockinette stitch, my gauge tightened up and the mitten won't be big enough. So I will be starting over with a larger needle size for that part of the mitten. It kills me to rip out all that work, but I wouldn't like them the way they are.  I will also make wider stripes for the green in the ribbing as I was getting way too many ends to hide.