Something different, oh yes.

Welp, since my usual knitting blog is down, and I haven't gotten around to figuring it out (laaazy), I'll post a bunch of knitting stuff here.

- An online friend asked for someone to knit her some pockets for her sweater, as she's a crocheter but crocheted pockets wouldn't look good, and I agreed to help out.  She sent me the yarn, and I appear to have bartered my knitting skill for the leftovers.  I'm not sure what I'll do with it, since it's sportweight mercerised black cotton, and I already have a skein each of blue and turquoise from else-project, but who knows?  Perhaps I'll take up freaky intarsia (the knitting, not the woodwork), and make some oceanscape thing.  I'd just need to get some matching white yarn… okay, it's a sickness, I know.

- I've taken apart a scarf I made for myself, to reknit into something better.  It's this purple acrylic faux-chenille stuff… I think it's chenille… anyways, it's prone to worming*, and I knit it too wide, but I was so enamoured of "Hooray, I knit this for me!", that I just accepted it.  Now I tire of it.  So, in a fit of waiting for my computer to finish upgrading, I disassembled it, and am reknitting it.  Instead of 30-some stitches across, it's 13, and instead of double moss stitch, it's linen stitch.

* This is when stitches randomly produce inchworms.  It's most common with chenille and chenille-like things.  The fix is to use a tighter stitch, apparently.

Double moss:
1) (k2, p2)*
2) (k2, p2)*

Linen:
1) p all
2) (k1, slip purl-wise)*, k1

Where the * here means to repeat to the end.  This, combined with dropping a needle size, will produce a tighter stitch, and so hopefully will reduce the amount of worming.

- I'm also knitting a lovely gorgeous scarf as a giftmas thing.  Row 1 = k1, p1 forever; row 2 = k3, p3 forever.  (Cast on evenly-divisible-by-6 stitches.)  (I could've said multiple of 6, but who wants to do that?)  First, I could knit this forever.  It comes out as something like when you take normal 1×1 ribbing and insert a column of garter between each column.  It's apparently called beaded ribbing.  Second, the yarn, though it contains animal fibers, is gorgeous both in colour and in texture.  I'm glad it contains animal fibers (they are itchy unto me), since I want to be able to give it up, you know.

- I'm also also plotting out ideas regarding knitting a ham, knitting a turkey, something nifty with illusion knitting, and I can't find the yarn I want for these two scarves whose patterns I don't yet have but I know who's going to get them.  High up on my giftmas wishlist is-are books about various knitting stitches.  I get some from the liberary on occasion, and oh how I adore them.  I thought I had to get patterns-books to get the stitches!  No no, I get the pattern books for patterns, duh.

- I don't even know how one makes this stitch, but I want it.

- I'm almost done with my Excel macro, that will take an x-sketch and turn it into an illusion knit chart, with instructions, since I like having both.  An x-sketch:

 xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxx  xxx   x

You know.  It will be awesome, I know it.  If I knew thing one about programming, I'd do it in there, but I don't, and I can do it in Excel, so who cares?  Not I!

Originally posted at Xtinian Thoughts.  Comment here or there.