Gentle Teresa – back

I am participating in Jean Chung’s knitalong of her Gentle Teresa pattern, which debuted in the First Fall issue of Knitty. I LOVE this sweater, and can’t wait to be finished with it so I can wear it everywhere all the time. It’s purple, so I’m not exaggerating very much at all.

Knitting? What knitting?

I signed up for the knitalong, and then promptly forgot all about it until Jean asked me how my sweater was coming along. At the time she wrote me, it wasn’t at all, but twelve hours later, I was ready to start the chart section. I should have called it a night there, but Damon was doing something funny with his eyes and I decided that I had time for more knitting and more episodes of The Vampire Diaries.

I love the way this pattern starts! I was doing just fine until I reached the chart portion of the back (so, you know, 3.5″ into it), and then things quickly spiraled out of control. It’s my fault for not using stitch markers, forgetting that I suck at counting, and for paying so much attention to episodes that I’ve already seen.

If there’s a way to lose a stitch between one row and the next, I will find it (the way, not the stitch; that usually takes several minutes of searching to locate). Once I righted my ship for the third time, I put stitch markers around the three charted portions of the pattern, which is where I was doing all of my stitch-losing. So far, so good, and I have already received several compliments on the color of this sweater. Having this many witnesses means that I’m going to have to work at this one and not procrastinate too horribly, but I still have my Halloween costume to work on, so this could get tricky.

I took a break from knitting and got back to reading. I now miss my socks, but at least I feel like I’ve really been exercising a different portion of my brain. Last night I tried to start the OpArt blanket by Melissa Dominguez, and ended up feeling like a moron, because I was having trouble understanding the whole two circular needle method, especially because the pattern is rated “mellow” by Knitty. So I’ll try again today or tomorrow, once I’ve gotten adequate sleep. I’m just sad because I even did a gauge swatch and am so ready to start this baby. If I don’t get it the next time I try, I may just cheat and start it on double pointed needles, switching once it gets bigger. This will be my fourth baby blanket, and hopefully this one will actually be completed before the birth of the child it’s intended for!

I keep doing this to myself. I don’t read the entirety of something, and it ends up biting me in the butt. For some reason, I had it in my head that the Monkey sock pattern by Cookie A. was knit from the toe up. I was apprehensive about starting toe up socks, but I figured that I would get it soon enough. So I got up this morning, Googled the figure 8 cast on, and got it after a few false starts! The tutorials on Knitty and Hello Yarn were invaluable! I was rolling, and just about the time I got to my first set of increases, I decided I should see where the sock pattern picked up. So imagine my surprise when I realized that Monkeys are NOT knit from the toe up. They’re top down, just like every other sock I’ve ever knit.

I was discouraged but not totally cowed. I googled toe-up Monkeys and found a few people who’d done it that way. Monos Locos, an adaptation by Jennifer O’Sullivan, looks interesting, but it inverted the lace pattern and removed the purls, which I did not want to do. Another toe-up adaptation, this one by Zhenya Lavy, kept the lace the way that Cookie A. had done it, but employed the magic loop, which I have yet to attempt. So that was no good for me, either. I found this web site that had a listing of Monkey KALs, and lost it, but I just used my Googlefu and found it again. Here you go! It lists various Monkey adaptations and tricks. So what was there to do but to frog what I had? Thankfully, I was relatively close to the start of my socks, so frogging was only mildly painful. Also, I already swatched this, so when I do begin, at least I know I should be on gauge.

I just checked, and it’s the Falling Leaves pattern that is toe up (and also on a magic loop). I think I may try those after I finish the Monkeys, unless I find another pattern that I like better in the meantime.