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.

All in all, not bad for something I started after work on Tuesday

For the past few weeks, I’ve been watching Eureka as I knit. I tend to watch comedies (or really mindless dramas) when I’m knitting, because they require less attention on my part. I started a new hat today, and I’m feeling a wee bit victorious, since it’s stranded knitting, a style that I haven’t done before. I was finding it surprisingly easy, and really enjoying how fast this hat was going. I said was, because I ran out of Eureka episodes to watch, and switched to Damages. I spent the first half of the first episode watching intently and knitting on autopilot, and now have been unraveling my work for the next hour. Note to self: serious drama and Fair Isle knitting do not mix.

I read the season arcs/spoilers on the wiki, because I suspected that this show was too mean for me. I’m pretty sure it is. Ever character on that show is vile, and I don’t care enough about them to overlook it. I did see that the 5 most recent episodes of Eureka are available on Hulu, so I will catch up and then watch the remaining episodes there.