July 15, 2004
A Full Day
Today was nice. It was the first day I've had totally to myself in a couple of weeks. And a day totally to myself means a day spent, for the most part, sitting on the sofa, knitting.
Today's victim? The Norge 2000 sleeve. I got to the beginning of the complex pattern:
In other fiber related news, I started the scarf I plan to make with the Colinette Engima last night, using:
K1, *YO, P2tog, rep from * to last stitch, K last stitch;
then K the next row, then rep. these two rows... (I think this is a variant of Purse Stitch)
And it was a mess. So I frogged it, then started it again, as a simpler bias garter stitch edge to the scarf, then frogged it and restarted and then the same a couple more times. I've never had this much difficulty with a yarn before.
Maybe I'm just using needles that are too big, I don't know (10's are recommended, I was trying 10.5's to see if a little looser is pretty). The yarn is very difficult; no matter how close of attention I paid, there always seemed to be a dropped stitch showing up someplace... even the final scarf start, which was simply Sl1, K to end on every row turned out to be fairly disastrous.
Does anyone have any success stories involving Colinette Engima? And if so, what are your tricks? Because even though I only have one skein to get through, it looks like I'm going to need some minor miracles here. What is it about me and synthetic fiber Colinette yarns that just doesn't get along well?