Knitter in Progress

After a near disaster on Saturday, I finally finished Clue 2 from MS3. Thanks to Stacey and Cynthia for keeping me from ripping the whole thing out(yes, I was at that point). Here it is basking in the mountain glory: So here's the topic of the day: lifelines--friend or foe? useful or useless? Right now I'm in the foe and useless camp, because the lifeline is what actually caused the problem this weekend. Lots to post this week. Here's what's on the agenda: **3 finishes **purchases and presents

--not a sprint. After the catastrophe last Saturday and a couple of days cooling off period, Mystery Stole 3 Clue 1 made it back to the needles. We(meaning the stole and I) had a few teammates this time: 3 crochet needles(in the event of another crochet hook mishap), dental floss and sulky thread--both for lifelines. I use Sulky thread, which is a kind of shiny metallic looking sewing thread, for my cross stitch projects because it comes out of the piece easily when you're done with it. So I thought it would be perfect for knitting lifelines--I was wrong. It's too light and spends more time getting in your way than actually being useful. So the unwaxed dental floss came into play--it's a great weight and after you knit through the row it's threaded through(which is a b*tch in my opinion)it stays out of the way. I've decided it's in my best interest to put in a lifeline every 10 rows or so--we will not have a repeat of the clue 1 disaster. The lifeline rows slow ...

Saturday started out beautiful and sunny here in Colorado. The day promised to be HOT and with that in mind I put out the kiddos pool in the backyard and set up the table on the deck with the comfy chairs and the umbrella. I looked forward to a day in the sun with the kiddos swimming and me working on my Mystery Stole clue. Things were moving along great--kids having fun. By lunch time I had completed the first 50 rows. I had thought briefly about putting in a lifeline but the decided I'd wait until I finished the whole clue. What.could.possibly.go.wrong.in.50.rows? I worked sporadically throughout the afternoon and by dinner time I had reached row 76. I was marveling at the beauty of the pattern. And I loved my beads. I was having a great time. After dinner I had some cleaning up to do. Diva and Rage asked me to go back into their pool. I said fine and we all headed back outside--the kiddos to the pool and me back to MS3. There was a nice breeze and it was getting cooler--perfect ...

I've decided to try the whole Mystery Stole thing next month. Here's my swatch: Yarn: Misti Alpaca Needles: size 4 Blocked Size: 4"x4" I actually knit 2 swatches. The first one had a mistake on the last row and I didn't like the cast off so I tried again. In the second I alternated slipping one knitwise(column 1 & 3) and purlwise (column 2). Unless the pattern specifies, I never know which is the default one so I wanted to compare them. My biggest problem so far is my cast off--I think it's still too tight. I even cast off with bigger needles and it was still tight. I may have to bring out the "table leg" 35s, seriously. Any tips would be appreciated, because I can't tell you how mad I'll be if I do the whole stole and the cast off ruins it.