more problems

It has been suggested by more than one person that January is a good time for a frog-a-long where you rip out the knitting you've messed up on in the past year and get back to a workable piece. I seem to be screaming for one of these as it seems everything I try to knit recently becomes a disaster.

"Everything" just means two items, which is all I've worked on in the past several weeks, which is probably good because otherwise I'd likely have many more messed up objects.

The first big huge mistake is the poncho. After careful inspection and comparison with my poncho that fits, I've decided that I either measured wrong or gauged wrong or calculated wrong - the two rectangles are each at least six inches too short, which means I'm missing out on a foot of circumference, which means that the poncho will never be correct the way it is. I'm going to have to give up, rip it all out, and think of some other way to create the poncho. It's probably for the best anyhow - the brick stitch pattern isn't as awesome as I thought it would be, and it curls dreadfully at the top and bottom, which I did not anticipate. Fortunately, the gift-recipient can wait for her birthday later this year to receive it.

The second big huge mistake is the second sock. This was a very NOT anticipated mistake (are mistakes ever anticipated???). I was knitting along happily, decided to check to make sure the stripes on the second sock were the same height as the stripes on the first sock, and when I held the two socks up together, I discovered that the stripe widths were fine, but THE FIRST SOCK WAS A HALF INCH WIDER!!! My gauge had changed!! A lot!!! Two needles sizes!!! I've managed to fix the problem...which meant ripping up the entire second sock (not that I had gotten very far to begin with...) and starting all over again. It's looking okay now, although the "fair-isle" patterns aren't identical in the two socks.

the socks travel in this great bag given to me by amber! it is a happy sock bag.

One thing that really worries me about the changing gauge is that this might mean my gauge for EVERYTHING I knit has also changed. This is really not very nice, and it means I'm going to have to proceed with extreme caution when I go back to pick up work on my projects that got tossed aside before Christmas - like the Starry Night Sweater and the Wave Skirt. I am really hoping that my knitting will loosen up again so I'll be able to keep the needles I had started those projects on.

And...oh my freaking goodness!! I won something!!! :-O My name was randomly selected from the holiday gift knitalong, and I'll soon be the happy recipient of some beautific Rowan Kid Silk Haze. I totally don't deserve it, so I think I shall knit it into something to give to a more derserving person. One of these days I'm going to have to gripe about how I don't like giveaways... I mean, I like them, I just always seem to win something, and I feel like that's not fair. But hey - there's nothing wrong with regifting a prize!