A Little Yarn On The Side

Carol Burnett said "Comedy is tragedy plus time." One of these days, that ribbed yoke pullover is going to be REALLY funny......

...and it has reinforced my decision to cancel my subscription. Not that I'm criticizing them--I've been subscribing for a very long time and they have provided me with some pretty amazing sweaters.  It's just that since knitting has become "trendy" the patterns have become "trendy," and if I am going to spend a year or two (you never know here at WIP Central) working on a sweater, I want it to still be in style by the time I finish it. Provided that I ever do, of course.  So, I flipped through the magazine, noticed there isn't a single thing I will ever knit, and put it in the bookshelf in the sewing room.  Why not just throw it out?  I was raised by packrats.  It's true. My parents moved into their house when I was 4, and until last summer when their basement was flooded, there were still boxes that hadn't been unpacked since they moved it 30+ years before.  They kept everything .  Somewhere down there, my Ballerina Barbie whose face wa...

Not that the ribbed yoke sweater has exactly won , but it hasn't exactly lost either.  We have, for the moment, declared a truce and are ignoring each other's existence. However, I did have some crafting time this weekend and thought I might spend it with the Kimono Shawl but someone beat me to it.  And let's face it, I am never that cute while knitting, so I let Theo have it for the day and went digging in the WIP bin.  I started this sometime last year, and the body just needed a few inches on the body, which I finished with NO frogging, swearing, or re-editing of a pattern (which made a refreshing change) and I have started a sleeve!  It's a simple pattern and will make great portable knitting, so it is the current favorite project, but it's going to take a little while to finish, and I was in need of some instant gratification, so I finished a few more towels (Obviously, I'm loving this design), and cut out and embroidered some felt gift ba...

--and I am taking the coward's way out. Sort of. I was all set to do battle with the ribbed yoke pullover, but we are having some friends over for dinner tonight, and I didn't think receiving another ass-whooping by a bunch of superwash would put me in the best frame of mind for entertaining, so I have chosen a safer route today. Sewing a few seams on the pullover and a couple pattern repeats on the kimono shawl which recently celebrated it's second birthday without yet being finished. Of course, it isn't actually the oldest WIP--there's a shawl on size 0 needles that just turned 5, but that is a bit more understandable. I mean, size zero needles? I'll be finishing that one the day I file for Social Security...provided my eye sight is still good and knitting hasn't finally snapped whatever will be left of my brain after the ribbed yoke pullover....

How did that happen? So, um, about the September Project of the Month.... It's not so much "finished." More along the lines of "never started" if we want to be technical and everything . I did round up all the cardboard & empty toilet paper tubes to make it, and there was a point last week when I could have sat down to finish it, but then I realized that I don't currently need it for a gift, and by next Christmas all of the cardboard would be bent or crushed. So, feeling guilty and thinking I should finish SOMETHING in September--and it obviously wasn't the sweater-that-shall-not-be-named, I dug out the Christmas blankets I made earlier this year and thought I would put the names on them. To say Theo was excited to be sewing again would be a huge understatement. He was purring and purring and I didn't have the heart to move him, so I decided to embroider a few more gift towels. OK, fine. I decided to grab the fleece blankets then. If I had...

For its own protection the yoke sweater, currently referred to as the-sweater-that-shall-not-be-named, has been moved into a secure facility where a frustrated knitter armed with scissors cannot get at it.

BOB : Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to tonight's episode of Iron Knitter, the new reality knitting show where w e give our unsuspecting knitter a completely messed up pattern which she must fix without any help from the original designer. Tonight's pattern, the notorious Yoke Pullover , has a cleverly concealed big floppy neck that, while perfect for a two-headed knitter, has driven most other knitters completely crazy. The designer was careful to NOT knit the yoke in the round to ensure that the unsuspecting knitter will not realize how floppy the neck is until she has actually finished knitting ALL the pieces AND sewing them together. A true masterpiece of sadistic design, wouldn't you agree Dave? DAVE: Absolutely Bob. It's a rare occasion when we can find a pattern that can so cleverly hide its "gotcha" moment even in a photograph. See how the model's hair completely covers the floppiness of the neck? True brilliance. We're dealing wit...