{"id":1018,"date":"2011-01-20T08:40:18","date_gmt":"2011-01-20T13:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jorahlavin.wordpress.com\/?p=240"},"modified":"2011-01-20T08:40:18","modified_gmt":"2011-01-20T13:40:18","slug":"finally-done-or-half-done-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1018","title":{"rendered":"Finally done… or half done, anyway!"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Saturday I drove Myr to the January meeting of her local lace guild. This is always a great time for me to get some knitting done, and today was no exception. Other than a Lost Hour when I went off on a simple mission to get some Panera soup and sandwiches (and got lost), I spent several hours working on the thumb of my Deep in the Forest mittens. I cast on for these exactly 17 months ago, and this is just the first of the pair. Talk about your delayed gratification!<\/p>\n

This pattern is by Tuulia Salmela<\/a>, whose designs I like a lot.<\/p>\n

Very rarely do I get though a knitting session without running into some<\/em> sort of problem, and this time there were two of the little devils.<\/p>\n

Devil One:<\/strong> Brittle Yarn<\/p>\n

The yarn I used (Jamieson’s Shetland Spindrift) is an established yarn from an old and well-loved maker, listed as a two-ply, but it looks like a single ply to me and nearly un-spun. I managed to get a ball of the black that is brittle. I’d gotten the tension under control enough that I hadn’t broken the yarn since the cuff, but on my last row, right at the tip of the thumb, the yarn parted. After some commiseration from the lace ladies, I took a break to get lunch, then came back determined to fix the thumb.<\/p>\n

I first tinked back far enough to weave in the black again, and was knitting along toward the tip of the mitten for the second time when I became aware of the Second Demon…<\/p>\n

Devil Two:<\/strong> Forgetting to Check the Fit<\/p>\n

The lacer to my left looked over and commented that the thumb looked a bit long. I had Myr try it on, and sure enough, the thumb was about a half inch too long. After taking some measurements and making a couple of calculations, I decided that I needed to remove about 6 rows to get back to the right length. Since 6 rows was exactly the length of the decrease area, I would have to remove twelve<\/em> rows to get the right length.<\/p>\n

It was time to head to our next destination, so we packed up and drove from Matthews to Pineville, for a quick stop at our LYS<\/a>. I had just enough time to rip back and pick up the stitches, and then off we went to Ballantyne. I had about an hour to wait, so I started working my way back to the tip of the thumb. The work was very fiddly with the fragile yarn and tiny 4-inch DPNs, but I got to the right length at long last.<\/p>\n

At home I got out my dogtag instructions for Kitchener grafting<\/a> and sealed everything up tight. I flipped the mitten inside out and wove in my yarn ends, then hemmed the cuff. At half past six I at last held the finished mitten…<\/p>\n

\"Photo<\/a>\"Photo<\/a><\/p>\n

(I’m trying to stay enthusiastic about casting on for the second of the pair!)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Saturday I drove Myr to the January meeting of her local lace guild. This is always a great time for me to get some knitting done, and today was no exception. Other than a Lost Hour when I went off on a simple mission to get some Panera soup and sandwiches (and got lost), … Continue reading “Finally done… or half done, anyway!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[85],"tags":[107,118,120],"class_list":["post-1018","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-knitting","tag-mittens","tag-stranded","tag-wip"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgY3e-gq","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":987,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=987","url_meta":{"origin":1018,"position":0},"title":"Aethelwyne Mitten aka “Myr’s Elven Friend”","author":"Jorah","date":"July 23, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Aethelwyne-Mitten-03 Originally uploaded by jorahlavin I finished the first Aethelwyne mitten today. This one is a fun project. I'm hoping to cast on the second one tonight, though my day has not turned out as I expected at all, so I won't be too surprised if I don't get started\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Knitting"","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1028,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1028","url_meta":{"origin":1018,"position":1},"title":"Knitter’s Inventory","author":"Jorah","date":"July 28, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been thinking this morning about my \"knitting journey.\" This fall I'll hit my 4-year mark from when I started to learn to knit. I have 54 finished projects in my list on Rav, or about one F.O. per month. More than I expected, really. But I've never been interested\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Knitting"","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1005,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1005","url_meta":{"origin":1018,"position":2},"title":"Midweek update: Dashing around","author":"Jorah","date":"December 22, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I spent the weekend thinking about knitting but not actually ...you know...\u00a0knitting. The tendinitis\u00a0in my elbow is back, but I don't think that's why I didn't knit. Anyway, I read things and generally goofed off and took it easy, which explains why the house isn't ready for guests for this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Knitting"","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1002,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1002","url_meta":{"origin":1018,"position":3},"title":"Admonishment","author":"Jorah","date":"December 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm in the midst of last-second holiday gift knitting... not really my style, I'm more of a slo-mo knitter and not much of a holiday or gift-giving type, either. In any case, I whipped up a pair of super-bulky mittens. My wife looked at them and said something to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Knitting"","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"Scrummy Mitts... poorly executed","src":"https:\/\/jorahlavin.files.wordpress.com\/2010\/12\/img_5290.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1001,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1001","url_meta":{"origin":1018,"position":4},"title":"Mostly Chimera","author":"Jorah","date":"December 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"If you look at Julia's original design, you'll see that the pattern came in two versions; as fingerless mitts and full mittens. When I showed the pattern to my intended recipient, she loved the design except for the garter ridge around the upper part of the mitten and on the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Knitting"","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/lh4.ggpht.com\/_CPR5QWKZNwg\/TQVbC_XjmpI\/AAAAAAAACz0\/IR-G4qbQgQg\/s288\/Chimera-Mittens-2010-a.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1010,"url":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?p=1010","url_meta":{"origin":1018,"position":5},"title":"WIP: “Dashing” fingerless gloves","author":"Jorah","date":"January 2, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"I took a couple of snaps of my current 'train project' (knitting I mainly work on while commuting). This is a pattern called Dashing by Cheryl Niamath. We have friends in New England who have helped us out of jambs many times over the last 20 years, and these are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Knitting"","block_context":{"text":"Knitting","link":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/?cat=85"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/jorahlavin.files.wordpress.com\/2011\/01\/dashing_blue_jenny.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1018"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1018\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1018"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1018"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/madstone.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1018"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}