Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Inching onward

Yesterday I tried to focus only on my Clockwork/Winter Warmer shawl scarf thingy, and though I got sidetracked by more pattern editing and some cookie consumption and a brief period of laundry I did make progress:

At this point, it takes approximately 16 years and 2 months to get through the four rows that constitute one stripe, so I'm going to be living with this project a while yet. Well, about another 12 hours if you want to be picky.

Leaving aside that the increase of 2-6 (or is it 8 now?) stitches every other row means each stripe takes longer to knit than the one before it and way longer than the one before that, I have been doing some pondering as I sit with this project.

It shouldn't make a difference whether the crazy number of stitches that go into knitting a sock or a shawl are predominantly horizontal or vertical in their placement, but there is that psychological Whoo! when you finish a row, isn't there. Even if it means you're working 165 rows instead of just 32. Maybe it's the maximization of the Whoo! potential that does it?

On the upside, working the scarf in this direction means I get to use my super wide sale-priced Addi circulars that would otherwise have been a false economy. And all that garter stitch makes this the perfect project to watch TV with, which is rather nice on the current diet of cold wet sleepy coughy-with-a-cold evenings I've been having here.

Knitting while watching movies is in fact so pleasant that I'd enjoy the whole experience if it weren't for there being a few other projects nudging their way into my conscious mind - the matching hat I can't start till I know how much yarn I have left over, the other pattern I want to test out, the quick Christmas knits that have to be done and packed up before their recipients leave for Florida, and then all that sewing my felted wool stash is waiting for me to get to...

GAH. I just have to put my foot to the floor and get my Clockwork done already. Twelve hours, three days. Think I can finish by the weekend?

1 comment:

Karen said...

I don't know about you, but for me it's a question of attention span. I can work shorter rows (say, less than 100 sts) with little trouble, but when I get up over 150 per row (or round, worse yet), I start to whine like a little kid on a long car trip: Are we there yet?