Less than perfect, but okay


In a more perfect world all the gardeners and trash pick up trucks would come on the same day. Instead we get some each day. And the neighbor's dog is trying his best to scare them all away. Oy!

But anyway. Yesterday I had six students. All at the same time. Four of them just needed a little attention now and again but two of them were brand new. A mother and daughter team. The daughter is a crocheter and that seemed to be giving her some problems. The mother remembers knitting with her grandmother when she (the mother not the grandmother) was a little girl. She had far fewer problems. I think they both did well and we covered a lot more stuff than I usually do in a first lesson. They had some extra time so stayed about an hour longer than originally planned.

I didn't get to spend as much time with Mendy as I would have liked. She brought three, or was it four, projects that she's working on. I'm going to do the finishing for her on one of them, crocheting the edges and seams. She'll be back later in the week for another demo of cabling. Just not enough time yesterday to really get into it.

I made a swatch last night using the Stop Monnalisa yarn. Not happy at all with it. The yarn is very crunchy and non-giving. You know how when you switch from knit to purl for ribs or cables you get those loose stitches on the last knit stitch? Well, it's really pronounced in this yarn and it looks like a column of holes. I'm going to keep working on the swatch and see if I can develop some technique for dealing with this. So far it works best if I just ignore it and keep my tension loose instead of trying to draw the stitches tighter. I do like the knit stitch surface though so I can always make just a plain sweater. It'll look good when it's done, even if it is boring to knit.

Have you seen The Purl Stitch by Sally Melville. We only got three copies and they're already gone. I thought the first book, The Knit Stitch, was worthwhile but this one is even better. Lots of good technical stuff and some pretty good patterns. I hope Ann Mary follows through and orders some more copies right away.

Comments are still down but they should be back over the weekend. Thanks, Teresa , for the update.