the frog pond

in an attempt to keep myself from going crazy from the monotony of knitting hundreds of yards of orange laceweight, i busted out an old project that has been collecting dust in my knitting basket for months. Norah Gaugan's snapping turtle skirt is the project in Knitting Nature that convinced me to buy the book, in fact i liked it so much that i even got the suggested yarn. i made it through the first four hexagons before i set it aside in favor of my mom's Lady E and i haven't touched it since. last night i pulled it out and finished the last two hexagons in the first row. they went by so quick, i don't know why i let it sit for so long. BUT (why is there always a but??) i blocked it this morning to see how it looked and i discovered two things.


1. its too big around in spite of making gauge. so much so that the problem is easily solved by making each row one less hexagon. easy peasy.

2. something is really wonky with the picked up stitches on the top triangles. i blame this on the fact that when i started this i had never picked up stitches before and i don't think i did it right. its unfortunate that i did not knit the lady E before this, since it involves picking up like a BILLION stitches. no, seriously.


i read on another knitter's blog that the skirt looked so horrible the whole time she had it on the needles that she thought she'd never wear it but that it turned out great. i thought the same thing until i blocked what i had. it does actually look pretty cool, and i'm definitely going to finish it, but i think i'm actually just going to frog the whole thing and start it over. especially now that i remember how quick the hexagons go by. i've also decided that its definitely going to need an elastic waist and a lining.

and another frogger


this was knitty's calorimetry. i've never seen a project with so many knitters having wacked out gauge issues (except maybe that crazy capecho thing on the cover of the winter 06/07 Vogue knitting... that shit was messed up) i used the same adjustments that a lot of other people used, though i have no idea what they were now. fewer stitches cast on and fewer rows or whatever, and it worked great.

we had a good relationship, calorimetry and i. i wore a pony tail and calorimetry kept my ears warm without making my hair all crazy. it was cute and colorful and matched many an outfit, but alas, it was but a one winter affair. the pattern says to be sure to use a yarn that won't lose its shape. but i was a new knitter and all yarns were the same, and people were knitting calorimetry out of everything (which probably explains much of the problem). the yarn looked great in the project but after about a year of use, it stretched a little more each time and never quite went back to where it was before. so finally it was gigantic and washing and drying would be no help for my superwash (damnit!) calorimetry. i had to admit that we were through.

doesn't it look all purty back in its yarn form though? i think i have a second skein somewhere, and i really like the colorway so i guess i have to come up with a project thats worthy of it. not socks though... i don't do socks.