Long Time, No Post

I haven't posted in four whole days. Wow. Well, it is because I was feeling a little frustrated with myself for reading about knitting and looking at knitting online and NOT ACTUALLY KNITTING. So I have progress to report:

1. Oisie's socks - the cable rib socks from an issue of Interweave Knits: One finished, 42 rows to go on the other one. I may finish tonight. Yay! Pictures to come.

2. Lorelei's sweater - a pullover from The Weekend Crafter: Knitting by Lark Books (warning: don't buy this book until you read my rant): Finished the back, undid the bind off on the front and did a three needle bind off to join the shoulders, picked up and knitted the neck, and wove in all loose ends except those at the patterning at the bottom, which I will weave in after I seam the sides. Tried it on her and it should fit this winter & next. It looks like a little tabard right now.

3. Finished unravelling the blue lambswool/angora thrift store sweater. I think it's going to be a cardigan for Lorelei.

What I didn't mention on #2 is that I also knitted almost half a sleeve on Lorelei's sweater, but I'm going to rip it all out. I thought the patterning in the pictures on the bottom of the sleeve was cute. It is more complicated than the patterning on the front and back. THERE ARE NO DIRECTIONS FOR THE PATTERNING IN THE BOOK. It says for the sleeves to do any pattern you like. Well, I like the pattern in the book. I (mostly) figured it out, but it looked like crap! That is because the FREAKING BOOK TOLD YOU TO USE THE SMALLER NEEDLES WHEN YOU WEREN'T SUPPOSED TO! It says to cast on for the sleeves using the smaller needles and gives all the instructions, but neglects to tell you to switch to the larger needles, which should probably happen after the fourth row or so.

I should have known. The directions for the front told you (on 50 stitches) to knit across 31, put the last 19 on a holder, and then knit back and forth across the 31 sts, decreasing on each side every other row. Had I done that, I would have had one giant shoulder section and half of a huge neck located at the edge of the front. HELLO!?!? I decided what they meant to say was K across 19, put the center 12 sts on one holder, the next 19 on another, then knit back & forth across the first 19 sts, decreasing at each side every other row. Then do the same on the 19 sts on the other side. That seemed to work.

When I first hit that section, I tried to contact Lark books to find out if there was an errata sheet for this book. I haven't heard back from them yet. Oh, well. I now have half a sleeve to frog & redo. Plus lots of wasted yarn from cutting at all the color changes. Yech.