Knitting Update

Well, I'm up to about 50 rows so far. I had knit 30 rows over the weekend, but tore them out and started over on Monday.

I decided to start with something a little easier than the fuzzy wool I bought for myself. I had a ball of red acrylic stuff I'd bought probably 10 years ago for a Raggedy Anne doll my mother and I started, then abandoned (we got as far as the legs, which I still have. They're a little creepy.), so I thought I'd make a scarf for MonkeyBoy, who is the least likely to object to wearing it. My mom got me started, showed me casting on and the basic stitch. I was merrily knitting away until I stopped to count my stitches and discovered that I'd been adding a stitch every single row. By the time I figured out what I was doing wrong, the scarf was slightly wider than MonkeyBoy himself, and looked more like a blanket than a garment.

So I started over, and now have about 10 inches of a reasonable width. I realized last night that I can actually knit without looking at what I'm doing now, at least for brief stretches.

But I can't purl, and I have no idea how to cast off. This could be a really long scarf ...


But I quite like knitting. It's very soothing, and I can pay attention to what's going on around me (usually chaos) at the same time. I try to sit with the kids when they're watching TV and talk about what's on, so they're not just vegetating, but there's only so much Quality Children's Programming a sane adult can take. Knitting lets me free up just enough awareness to pull out the Meaningful Themes and Moral Lessons from whatever we're watching and beat the kids over the head with them.