Friday, April 28, 2006

Perfectionists look away now

Well here we are at Sanquhar Stage 2! As you can see there are millions of imperfections just in the rib. the yarn is so fine that stitches just disappear and you cannot see where they have gone or what you have to pick up to recover them so I just resorted to stabbing at something to get my 2 black 2 white!!
It's not just about losing stitches either. At the point where you change from one of the needles to another the needles secretly grab a piece of yarn that stretches between the two needles and pretend that it's another stitch.
I don't consider those problems to have been of my making but I am completely to blame for the silly idea of hanging my own cobbled together "combined stitch marker and row counter" on this Sanquhar Spiders Web. The result? A lumpy, loopy white bulge running up the rows that I allowed it to be in residence in!!! Aaargh! So I went back to a short loop of contrasting yarn - even that seems like a ships's hawser - AND I UNWOUND IT AND ONLY USED ONE PLY!!

Anyway - whatever the result I have finished the rib and I have done my initials although they will probably turn out to be in the wrong place.

The next stage of the pattern is scary:
"Round 40-51: Work Pattern-C while working Chart-A at the beginning of the round." !!!!!!

Pattern C is harmless enough - it's just the black and whiteness of the little 22 stitches by 22 rows of pattern and I can say each row out loud to myself e.g 2 black, 3 white, 3 B, 3 W, 2 B, 4W, 1 B, 4W.

BUT the Chart A part is not harmless - it is a grid which is coloured in black and white AND has little symbols sitting on it for increasing and decreasing!!!
It's all jagged and pointy because it is trying to represent something 3 dimensional in 2 dimensions!!!!

By the way - in case you haven't guessed I was always hopeless at Maths and Science and "stuff" like that" The even scarier thing is that I have reached the stage in my life where I work out what change I need etc faster than YOUNG people. Yep I am officially middle-aged!!!

Now one of my dilemmas is (or should that be "are"?) are the 2 black at the beginning of Chart A the same as the 2 B at the beginning of Pattern C? I think I may have to take a LONG sabbatical from the "real" gloves and try this out on GIANT needles. The thought of 4mm is sheer bliss.

In case you have actually read this far you can see the delightful pattern that Glovegreyknitter
and I are "following" here.

And in case you are still awake there is alleged help about reading Japanese patterns here.
Help about the TWO sorts of charts. and
symbols for increasing (symbol like charity ribbon)decreasing (like a sideways "Y")

OK You can go and have a sit down now with a nice BIG mug of tea and a choccy digestive.
.... I put the digestive in because I used to work with a Japanese girl and she absolutely hated digestive biscuits .. so that's my revenge on the whole Japanese race for those horrible patterns!!

Ok I know that's mean when some wonderful Japanese woman has gone to to all the trouble of CHARTING !!!! (calm down!!) out the Scottish Sanquhar pattern.

I'm going for a lie down ..... see you all in about 12 years time.

3 comments:

KnitYoga said...

Hi Ruth
Good luck with the gloves. They're lovely! They remind me of the Selbu mittens that I want to make in very thin black and white Rauma wool. They're on my list of things to do which is now very long. Good idea of yours to practice the very difficult bit first before tackling the real thing. This is what I do, too, if I'm not totally confident on something. I'm sure that they'll work out fine in the end and you won't need to have a "nervous knit down!"

Stitch 'n Dye said...

Ruth

I need to lie down after reading your entry. You will deserve a major celebration once you've done them. Very best of British for the journey ahead.

Seahorse said...

Wow! I've had this pattern bookmarked for a while. I'm hugely impressed that you're even attempting it. I hope you carry on, I'd love to see the finished result!