I'm trying not to think about Fiona. So, what better way to distract myself than become a production knitter!
Deb Stoller emailed me with images of the Flame Sweater on a model. She'd pieced it together and corrected an error in the cuffs (the pattern I had didn't indicate a switch from the CC to MC). It looks lovely! I'll not post pictures: I figure everyone can see the completed work when it comes out in the book. She also has about a week and a half to get all the projects together and has asked me for help. I agreed and today I went to the city to pick up what needed to be done:
*An extremely colorful striped poncho needs to be shortened. After much mulling it over with Deb, we decided that I would remove the orange-white-red rows at the bottom and about four rows of the pink above that. I would then reknit the white back in and do one row of red before binding off with the red.
* Two "honeycomb" hats need to have bees sewn on it.
* A knitted butterfly (with crochet edges) needs to be removed from a grey chenile scarf and knitted on a cream chenile one.
* The handles of a bag with an intarsia smoker needs to be knitted, sewn in, and the bag needs to be finished with a lining (never lined anything before... very exciting).
* Two amazing furry hats need to be frogged quite a way (24 rows) to remove an increase that isn't necessary. Then I'll knit it back up.
I walked over to KnitNY afterwards, to pick up some appropriate needles (a large US10 circular for the poncho and a large US6 circular for my Charlotte). When I walked in, a very cute knitter complimented me on my bag and we started talking. Her name is Melissa of Recycle This! and she makes bags out of plastic! She was very cool, down from Albany to see the Phish concert, and a fairly new knitter like myself. We talked for some time about knitting and our projects until her friend arrived and I needed to get motoring back to NJ.
When I was on the train home, I started working on the poncho and frogged up to the pink. By the end of the evening, I had this:
One down, four to go! I had to frog my work once: I only removed three rows instead of four for the pink, so I had to go back and redo it. The pattern is quite easy and I think Ella would love it, if I showed it to her.
I'll work on the projects tomorrow and I hope to do most of them so that I have a majority of the weekend to work on the furry hats. They will be the hardest, since it'll be like unravelling some hardcore fun fur. Plus, the yarn is double stranded, so I think picking through it will be difficult. We'll see. I remain optimistic.
Plus, I hope that this temporary avoidance will make me more eager to get back to my own projects. Crossing fingers!
