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Saturday October 28, 2006

Christina: Whitby Gansey - All plain sailing

I have used up my first 100 gram ball of wool; that is: all bar the last 6 inches as a moth seems to have chewed through the thread very near the end. Little to report except lots of plain knitting.
I am purling only one stitch at each side, and Alison's gift of lovely bead placement markers are really coming into their own. I hardly have to concentrate at all - though this has lead to a dropped stitch, which I had to pick up some half a dozen rows down. The knitting is so tight on the fine needles that the extra tension has not distorted the fabric at all noticeably.
I never understood the stuff about dropped stitches; when I was young, it seemed to be a major topic for knitters and a key indicator of knitting incompetence. Growing up, I thought you would have to be a real ninny to (a) drop a stitch in the first place, and (b) not be able to easily correct it. Lately, I have knitted a couple of vintage 3 and 4 ply patterns where the instructions "cast on 328 stitches" is not so uncommon, my eyesight is not so acute, and I am a little more humble. Going to the trouble of counting your stitches, finding one short, and having to examine the stitching to find out where it might have gone is .... well... needles and haystacks spring to mind.

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Posted by Christina at 2:16 PM. Category: Ganseys