These Mittens Are Killing Me

Every now and then, I launch into a creative frenzy. I heard it best described once by a lady who taught a class I took. She had compiled thousands of stories to use in her classes. One student wondered at how she could possibly have done so much and kept up with it. She shrugged, and said, "That was a kick I was on a few years back. I'm onto a new kick now."

That's me.

Right now, I'm on a knitting design kick. I'm trying to do this, I'm trying to do that, yada, yada, yada.

The first design is in limbo. I don't even want to talk about it.

The second design is for cashmere I bought on a recent visit home. I needed a sharper set of needles for the project I brought with me, and I found some lovely cream cashmere on sale for a song.

Hopefully, it will be a mitten and hat set, but at the very least it will be a pair of mittens and a matching headband.

If it doesn't kill me first, that is.

I poured over stitch dictionaries. Five or six of them. I sketched. I swatched. I started.

And then I ripped it out. I had the pattern slightly off the first time, and my stitches were anything but even. I sketched again. And swatched again.

And then I ripped it out. Again. The pattern was right, but I couldn't follow it to save my life. So I ripped back to a spot where I knew I had it right. But then I wasn't sure. So I ripped back to the cuff, where it had to be right. Right?

Nope. I hadn't even cast on the right number of stitches for the cuff. Argh. I ripped it all out.

So finally, I knit a full swatch of what the pattern ought to look like. I marked off every single row as I did it, and I might just have finally figured out this darn pattern. (Yeah, I know, the one I designed.)

The only silver lining to all this is it's a pretty sturdy yarn that has taken to ripping out without getting all nasty. I'm just not sure how much it can take before it starts to look crappy. And I'm not really interested in finding out.

Time to cast on again.

Maybe soon I'll have something to show for it. Or maybe it'll be time to move on to a different kick...