In this day and age when everyone has a phone in their pocket and the telephone booth has virtually disappeared, I was pleasantly surprised to see this:

We stumbled upon this lovely old British telephone booth on a tiny village common.  It has been turned into a free book exchange for the community.  The idea is to leave books you no longer want and take ones you do.  What a cool idea: no rent to pay, no staffing needs, no closing times.  If you find yourself without a book to read in the middle of the night (heaven forbid!) all you need is a flashlight and a pair of boots and you can fix what ails you.

I love this idea!  Now to have one for stash yarn……

In my last post, I talked about the problems I was having with my current project which boiled down to a mis-match between pattern and yarn.  I am pursuing a devious plan with respect to that project, but will instead here reveal another project misadventure.  A few weeks ago, Doug was away on a business trip to China.  I thought it was a perfect opportunity to try to get started on a secret project for him.  I had seen some lovely mini-skeins of 4-ply Hampshire yarn from The Little Grey Sheep, at Loop in London (or, rather, on their website).  I bought one in virtually every colour they had in stock for some experimenting:

I had decided to make a striped button-down vest.  I did the requisite swatching for tension, worked out the math, spent a very long time doing 1×1 ribbing for the waistband, and then began striping.  What I failed to do was to actually swatch some striping sequences to see if these colours worked together, and if so, how they would work best.  I blame this on the fact that I wanted to get a start on actually knitting the garment while Doug was away.

Here is where I got to when I had the unfortunate image of a 1970s kitchen pop into my mind.  Those of you who are old enough may remember these avocado, burnt orange and mustard colour schemes that dominated every kitchen of the era?  It gave me a shudder and I just couldn’t knit anymore without seeing those kitchens.  Among the mini-skeins there were also a number of pinks and purples, but these didn’t seem to work with the other colours either:

What to do?  I mentioned it on Ravelry and most people said (rather sensibly) “Why don’t you ask Doug?”  So I did.  Doug actually has no problem with the colour schemes, or including the pinks and purples.   His criticism: “Stripes are boring: couldn’t I do something to liven them up?”  You know all those women knitters who complain that their husbands only want boring garments?  Clearly, I do not have that problem.

I worked out an interesting way to liven it up, which would involve my needing more of some of the colours, and then went on-line and discovered that those colours were all sold out.  Grrr…..

So, what to do?  “Off to the Knitting Project Naughty Corner with you!”  We will see if you look better after a prolonged period of time-out.  (Most likely I will rip and re-purpose this very lovely yarn.)

While I am on the topic of bad news, I am half-way through a two-week business trip to Johannesburg.  I got sick the moment I arrived.  It is cold here and overcast.  I have a heavy teaching load and am feverish.  I am in a hotel room by myself.  I am too tired at night to knit.  Boo hoo.

Not wanting to drown in self-pity, however, I will end this post by showing you some pretty new yarn.

This is a fingering weight 75% wool and 25% silk blend hand-dyed by Dye for Yarn, in the gorgeous colour Fading Stormy Night.  Beautiful, no?

It is for a special new project which I intended to knit here in Jo’burg.  So far, not happening, but tomorrow is Saturday and maybe the knitting gods will smile on me.

It is a beautiful weekend and I plan to enjoy it and not think too much about all of the stalled knitting projects needing a fix.  But, I will do a quick post to show why I’m stalled.  I have hit a few problems with my Sunbird Top.  I decided to knit this with Carol Feller’s new yarn, Nua, which is a blend of wool, yak and linen.  Although I hit the gauge pretty much smack on, I am not convinced that it is the right yarn for this pattern.  I thought that the linen content would make it a breezy, spring-like fabric, but in fact it knits up warmer than I had anticipated.  It is a lovely yarn, but maybe not the best for this project.  (Although, I will withhold judgement until it’s done.)

There are some additional problems, however.  First, as you can see above, there is some significant curling on the bottom edge.  This is really not making me happy or confident.  Although blocking should help to fix it, some other aspects of the construction may exacerbate the problem.  The pattern has a bit of lace on the side:

The funny little shape at the end of the lace will not stay that way; the edges are sewn back against the lace to form a neat curved edging that is supposed to look like this:

© Interweave / George Boe

I think it will take some significant blocking effort to get mine to look like this, and I worry that sewing up the edges to produce this curve will make the curling even worse by pulling the cast-off edge tighter.  And, as I think you can see in the photos, the yarn that I am using isn’t drapey enough for this pattern, at least not while knit at this gauge.

The second issue has to do with size. I started knitting it in a size 46 to give plenty of ease, and then after putting the front and back together to knit the body in the round (this is knit top-down) I decided it had too much ease, and cut back the number of stitches cast on under the arms.  Thus, it is really knit in two sizes – one above the chest and a different one below, and I am not convinced this was the right move.  The back and shoulders seem to fit reasonably well:

However, I don’t feel as if I have the ease and drape it needs over the body of the garment.  (By the way, for those who notice such things: this is me.  I have had a rather major hair cut!)

Third, I am having “tear-out-my-hair” issues with the sleeves.  The pattern calls for stitches to be picked up all the way around the sleeve cap, and then to use short rows to knit down.  This is done using DPNs.  I cannot even begin to tell you how much I am hating this and how awkward it feels to me.  Not only that, but now that I am most of the way done with one sleeve cap, I can see that I have too many stitches and the cap is puckered!

It took me three evenings of lackluster knitting to knit this portion of this sleeve!  I hate doing it and it looks crappy.  So, my next move will be to rip this out, and then to knit the sleeves flat and sew them in.  I know that I could do both sleeves, and the setting in, in no time that way, so why should I struggle with knitting it this way?

As you can see, I am unhappy with this.  I am hoping that if I knit the sleeves flat, and then give this a good soak and a block, all of these issues will disappear, but in the meantime, I have lost all of my mojo for this project.  And there is a little voice in the back of my head saying “Go ahead and rip the whole thing and re-purpose the yarn into a pattern which will suit it better!”  What do you think?  Rip or persevere?

In the interest of full disclosure, here is a shot of my new hair:

I was prepared to write about another project – one which I switched to in order to cheer me up, only to have it kill my mojo even further – but I think instead I will go enjoy the sunshine!  I hope that your adventures this weekend are lovely ones!

Kelly:  “I am in a knitting rut.  It seems boring to me now.  I think it’s because I’m not doing enough creative work in my knitting.  I’m finding nice patterns, and knitting some nice things, but I’m not experimenting.  I’m not indulging my creativity.  My knitting used to be innovative and fun.  It’s not innovative and fun right now.”

Doug: “Skydiving is fun.”

Kelly: “Maybe, but it’s not innovative.”

Doug: “It is if you’re knitting.”