Everything trundling along

Made pretty good progress this week on Xmas knitting and reclaimed 2 "no-think" projects so I can keep knitting as I finish my little Xmas bits up. I completely finished Baby Clara's crocus cardigan (washed, ironed, buttons on) and took one last picture before I send it off in the mail:

The sleeves are not quite as vestigial as they look in this photo - that's just the camera angle amplifying my worry over the not-so-roomy sleeves.

In "no-think" projects, Janice helped me get back on track with the Meadow Flowers on Sunday. My little flower motifs were "off by one" in relationship to one another. We found the mistake and decided where to inc 1 so the remaining rows will be correct. I'm up to 17 flower motifs per row now, heading for a total of 21 before Xmas.

Also this week, I completed the first A Step Above sock (Knitters 75, Summer 2004), conquering the evil afterthought heel pickup and cast on #2. I think of this as "no think" knitting, aside from the blasted heel.

What was the deal with the heel? I'm glad you asked. I'm hoping these notes might help future knitters of this project.

The heel was picked up from waste yarn knit in between two sets of triangles (most of the sock, as you can see, is squares, not triangles). The triangle edge you pick up from is formed by the ends of multiple shortrows along the base of the triangle. So what you are picking up from is not really recognizable stitches or rows. They are halfway in-between.

So you knit the first triangle, leaving 1 stitch behind on the needle every row for the shortrows. Then a straight row of waste yarn. Then after the waste yarn, you continue shortrowing, this time with a few decreases to get back to the 24 stitches needed for these two triangles. Picking up from shortrows is the part that threw me.

When the waste yarn came out, the sole stitches were no problem, despite the decreases in the very next row. On the other side, when the waste yarn came out, the last stitch of each shortrow got confused and tended to pick up as 2 stitches rather than 1. I got so pissed off trying to get actual stitches on the needle that I dropped this project for for nearly a month.

When I came back, I decided if those shortrow ends wanted to be two stitches each, I'd just let them be 2 stitches each. I just picked up extra loops until I truly had 2x the stitch count and decreased all the way across the first heel row, knitting the "extra loop" from each shortrow stitch together with the stitch before it (not its row-mate.. the stitch one row "above" the goofy loop). After that, it was just another toe-shaped heel.

Last on the project parade, some seams for Fuzzy Stripey #2 and some stuffing & seams for the Snowman shelf/computer doll. I'm holding back photos of that one until it's delivered, since the gal who is going to recieve it looks at my photo page sometimes.

I'll be travelling this weekend to visit my grandma Grace (remember she had a heart attack and bypass surgery in September? Well, she moved back into her own very own apartment on November 5th and I'm going to get to see her there on Saturday!) in Wisconsin, so I'll have lots of time for no-think knitting on planes. Meadow Flowers and ASA socks are going to rock for travelling. Be back Wednesday! Happy knitting til then.