Snow bad, knitting pretty

[selenay]

Despite being after March 21st now, the sky had the audacity to produce sufficient white stuff overnight that I had to shovel this morning.

Shovel. In late March. Blech. I would have left it to melt as the temps are going up a lot later this week, but the plough kindly dumped a mass of frozen yuck at the end of the drive that my car couldn't climb and the snow had drifted a foot high around my car, leaving the rest of the drive largely naked. It's out to get me. Grr.

Still, I was only fifteen minutes late to work and I would have been on time if there hadn't been a car broken down on the highway. I feel good about that.

Last night I had a lace-knitting nightmare. Took me an hour to do four rows and I've still got a mistake that I need to find tonight before going on. I think that I'm starting to get lost in yarn overs. Anyone got good suggestions for how not to do this? I'm either ending up with one too many stitches (implying that I've not knitted together sufficient stitches) or on the current row one too few stitches (implying that I've missed a yarn over), yet when I take it back and re-knit I always end up with the same number of stitches. I suspect that it's time to break out the stitch markers.

This time I'm cheating, though. I'm missing a knit 2 together and hoping that I don't make any more mistakes to upset the pattern. I now see why so many people struggle with lace.

The tunic that I'm knitting is so far going very well, largely because it's 63cm of moss stitch to the arm holes. Hard to mess up moss stitch, really. But I've got sock itch. I keep remembering that I've not made my Crazy Monkeys yet and I have lovely, amazingly soft Knit Picks yarn in the stash that I want to feel on my feet. Damn the sock addiction. It doesn't help that the convention socks (mmm, Trekking...) are incredibly soft after two washes and a little lighter (thus more wearable when it's not 20 below) than my first socks so now I want more soft, knitted loveliness decorating my feet.

I'm waiting for a colleague to do a Tim's run and bring me my medium double cream. The caffeine is needed. Been a very busy morning.

Comments

[catseatsocks.livejournal.com]

I think it's cute you think it won't snow anymore because it's late March. I drove to New Brunswick in a full on blizzard at Easter a few years ago.

[catseatsocks.livejournal.com]

Also didn't mean for that to sound patronizing. It's just, it happens, but spring is here and the snow won't last long. Girl Scouts honour!

[selenay]

Hee, I didn't take it as patronising :-) I can totally deal with 'aww, look at the naive English girl' because, er, I was naive in assuming the snow would stop before June :-)

[catseatsocks.livejournal.com]

LOL. Seriously, it's not unheard of to snow a bit in April, or May, but past March don't expect anything major. Oh and prepare yourself for the days and days of rain.

[evil_plotbunny]

We had an April 1st blizzard a few years ago. This morning there was ice in the harbor. You're north of me. Logic dictates that you still have snow.

The thing is that when you knit back, you're probably undoing whatever when wrong (extra wrap round the needle, extra k2tog), so you won't necessarily see it).

I'm good at keeping track of these things, so I rarely break out the stitch markers, but I'm starting a square shawl this weekend that will probably require them.

[selenay]

Mum tells me of a May 1st blizzard here a few months ago. I just got hopeful and lulled by the sunny, beautiful weather last week.

I think that I am undoing whatever goes wrong when I knit back and then re-doing it when I re-knit. Hence ending up with the wrong stitch count even after knitting the same row three times.

I'm suspecting that it was a poor concentration thing. I can't see any easy, logical way of breaking out the stitch markers at this stage because it's a triangular shawl and the location would need to change with every row. I think. There will be a need for them later, to mark the central stitch if nothing else, but right now I can't see it working. Drat. Guess I just need to pay more attention to what I'm doing!

[evil_plotbunny]

I have done that with lace patterns. Does the pattern specify marker locations when you start, because you can mark off sections that will shift as the number of stitches grows.