Strikke!

It may not seem like it, but I really *have* been working on my Strikke-along project. I've changed my idea about three times mid-stream with this project. I finally settled on a semi-yoked, 2x2 rib pattern with a split neck.

Here we see my first challenge. Ok, second. The first was figuring out how to knit in the round. How do I join the sleeves to the body?


I spent almost a week puzzling this out. I couldn't figure out how to join the sleeves to the body at the underarm.
I kept reading and re-reading Elizabeth Zimmerman's intructions in Knitting Without Tears. Then it hit me: the sleeves are joined to the body on the OUTSIDE edge, not the underarm edge. The underarm stitches float while the body and yoke are worked. It was the diagram that confused me.


Once that hurdle was hurdled, the yoke went very fast. I added a crocheted contrasting border at the neck and a nice Tinn-Per Norweigan frog clasp at the neck.



Just in time for...

Gone in 5 seconds

Life oftens throws you a loop. Remember our redecoration? We moved the hanging cabinet from the kitchen to the dining room. Doesn't it look lovely? See my beautiful glassware and ceramics?



Look again.



The cabinet fell off the wall. Just...fell.





Brewguy was standing in the dining room talking to his mom on the phone. I was in the kitchen cleaning up a wine glass he had just knocked on to the floor and broken (can you say harbinger?) There was a boom, then a crash and a crash and more and more crashing as the cabinet fell off the wall, smashing all the glassware. More than smashing- pulverizing.

I stood there, open jawed. Brewguy was silent for a moment, then spoke into the phone, "Mom, I've got to go. The cabinet just fell off the wall."

The consensus is that the vibration from the door caused the bolts to loosen.

It has been a few days, but I am still mourning the loss. My grandmother's Fostoria, the Waterford I dragged back from Stoke-on-Trent in my suitcase, the art deco coffee pot, the crystal... all gone. Everthing I've collected over the last 20 years. Poof! The kicker? Our insurance does not cover glassware or ceramics.

I try to keep in mind that the little brewers weren't home at the time and so therefore weren't hit by flying glass. I'm still finding little pieces of glass around.

Like most disasters, there were a few survivors.

Sometimes yarn does not wish to be frogged. Take, for example, the pieces below.



I found these two pieces at the local thrift store. The price was right - 25 cents. I thought I could just frog them for the yarn. I think the first one was an unfinished baby bib. I have no idea what the little ball-shaped object was supposed to be. The opening was not big enough for a hat. A yarn hackey sack, perhaps?

So I began to take them apart. Pull, pull, snag. Puullll...grab. Grabsnag. Arrgh! This yarn was the stickiest yarn. It just did not want to be pulled apart, like yarn super glue. I can be very tenacious and stubborn (just ask my graduate school advisor), so once started, it became a contest of wills between myself and the yarn. I won, but at what cost? My hands hurt and I had spent WAAY over 25 cents of effort to gain...


A bunch of partial balls of yarn. The original crocheter cut the yarn at the end of every other row. Sheesh.