New project Wednesday
Last night, Mom and I got together for a bit of coffee and knitting. We both had new projects we were attempting to get started.
Mom was trying out the magic loop technique on a toe-up sock. At various points, I observed the needle in her mouth, flipping through the air, and almost poking her eye out. Magic, indeed.
I was wrangling something a bit different: casting on 307 stitches using a grabby cotton yarn and a not-at-all slippery Denise circular needle (I see some Addi Turbos in my future). At one point the stitches were so bunched up and stuck on my needle that when I went to tug on them to move them, I ended up yanking a whole gaggle of stitches off the ends of my needles by accident.
This is what I was casting on for:
The Show-Off Ruffle Skirt by Kat Coyle, published in the book Lace Style (my current favorite knitting book). I'm making it in a red cotton/nylon blend (Cascade Yarns Cotton Rich DK). I hear that the bobble rows take eons to knit, but I'm so motivated to have this skirt and wear it, that I can endure the pain. I know I can.
My mom gave me a good piece of advice before I started casting on for this. Because there were so many stitches to cast on, she suggested using two balls of yarn instead of one. I just tied the ends together and cast on as though it was a regular long-tail cast on, but I never had to worry about running out of my yarn. It took a lot of the anxiety out of casting on that many stitches.
And after an evening's work, I'm only four rows into the thing (and that doesn't include one of the infamous bobble rows). This is going to take a while! I'm leaving for a business trip tomorrow and I usually only take sock projects with me on planes, but this one is definitely coming with me.
