Counting crows rows

Been having some problems with the pesky sticks & string lately . . .

But let’s start with a success—or at least, half of one. Here is the wrist warmer I completed last night. It is delightfully cozy and soft; I want to roll around in a roomful of this yarn.

Yarn: Louisa Harding Kimono Angora; color: 2, Blue Purple Mix. The content is 70% angora, 25% wool, and 5% nylon. It is stunning yarn, but I’ve never knitted with mohair angora (see comment above—thanks, Alison!) before. If you use this yarn, knit something you won’t have to rip out! I was fine with this easy k2p2 design until I got to the bind-off.

I bound off the finger and thumb openings very loosely because I plan to wear them when I write (my hands are often cold when I’m on the computer), and an overly tight bind-off would drive me crazy. But I ripped out the finger bind-off twice before I was satisfied the third time with Elizabeth Zimmerman’s stretchy bind-off, which you do with a darning needle.

As I was binding off, I went even further and stretched each stitch as I bound it off. I didn’t care as much how it looked as how it felt on my fingers when wearing it. Now I can’t feel the bind-off when I’m wearing the wrist warmer, which is the way I wanted it for hours of computer typing.

Now I need to begin the other wristwarmer, but the yarn colors are so luscious I’m looking forward to it.

And now the downer: I finished a pair of socks, kitchener bind-off, ends woven in–everything. Then Cliff (standing in as proxy for the gift recipient) tried on the socks and I realized that one of them is, oh, just a tad longer than the other one.  SEVEN ROWS longer, to be exact.

AND the toes on both socks are so pointy they look like elves booties, so I have to rip BOTH sock toes out, add yarn, and re-knit them again. What was I thinking?

Yarn: Cherry Tree Hill Supersock DK; color: Moody Blues. The marker on each sock is sixty rows from the heel flap, and you can see how much longer one is than the other (she says, weeping).

I have been putting off this fun toe remodeling job for more than a week, but finally took the plunge and ripped them out last night. Until now, I’ve never knit socks that turned out to be different lengths, but I suppose this is what happens when you measure (poorly, against your thigh, because you’re too much of a bum to get up and measure on a flat surface) instead of counting rows.

I knit socks on two circulars, so I’m thinking I may start knitting both socks on the same needles, row by row, so I’ll know they’re even. I didn’t want to mess with the yarns getting tangled, but that sounds better than ripping out toes and weaving in more ends.