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ysobelHaving spent all day (more or less) knitting -- and /wow/ can I feel it in my upper arm muscles (knitting is, apparently, exercise for me) -- I have a complete toe and then some. Well, a few rows beyond.
... I am not happy.
Partly, it's just crankiness at short-row stuff itself. I don't much like it, and wrapping stitches is a /pain/ on the loom. And the gaps are, well, gappy.
And, well. The standard needle method of starting with short-row toes is to do a provisional cast-on, generally crochet or something, that can be used to pick up stitches. It's been so long since I've done short-row toes that I forgot that bit.
The instructions with the loom are nicely vague, but they basically boil down to this: cast on normally, do the short rows, and then "locate the first row, and place on opposite side of the knitting loom -- each of the empty pegs should now have a stitch."
I am doing fingering-weight yarn, on a loom with pegs spaced 3/16 of an inch apart, and I am working with the loom at about navel height. And thirty-whatever eyes. It is impossible to /find/ all of the individual first-row stitches. Which means that the best I could do is uneven and gappy and really stretched in one corner. And there's the stupid ridge, and and and.
As I said. I am not happy.
One of the things I really like about the turkish/fig8 toe cast-on is that it's essentially invisible. The increases you can see, but it flows better, and there isn't the abrupt switch in knitting direction at the 'seam'; the cast-on "edge" mimics a knit stitch, like grafting does.
And it really fucking frustrates me that I can't figure out how to do it on the loom.
I considered doing a sort of zig-zag cast-on, with loops alternating sides of the [rectangularish] loom. If it were the equivalent of the t/f8 cast on style, I could then knit with appropriate increases, and the cast-on "row" would be hella stretched out, but it's easy enough to tighten up a row by tugging on the stitches. Except I realized that it would have a freaking annoying ladder effect up the sides, because there's a 2 or 3" distance between the two long sides, and this effect would get less drastic as I increase stitches in the toe, but it's still there. And tightening a single row at the edge of the yarn is managable, but tightening the two end stitches for eight rows? Really not going to work.
The perfectionist part of me wants to rip the whole thing out and start again, figuring out some way of placeholdering the cast-on stitches so I don't have to try to grope for them. The lazy part of me says that for one thing, my first several socks are going to be utterly crappy anyway, and for another, the problems aren't as horrible as I think they are.
...the perfectionist side is likely to win out, but I haven't yet taken it off.
On the bright side, I love the colors of the yarn I'm using. It's shades of purple and shades of green, and even though it's not the official name I think of it as vineyard yarn, because the purples are grape-purple and the greens are vine-green and it's just seriously yummy.
(It would also cause problems amongst the Drazi, but seeing as how I don't know any, that's not a problem.)
... I am not happy.
Partly, it's just crankiness at short-row stuff itself. I don't much like it, and wrapping stitches is a /pain/ on the loom. And the gaps are, well, gappy.
And, well. The standard needle method of starting with short-row toes is to do a provisional cast-on, generally crochet or something, that can be used to pick up stitches. It's been so long since I've done short-row toes that I forgot that bit.
The instructions with the loom are nicely vague, but they basically boil down to this: cast on normally, do the short rows, and then "locate the first row, and place on opposite side of the knitting loom -- each of the empty pegs should now have a stitch."
I am doing fingering-weight yarn, on a loom with pegs spaced 3/16 of an inch apart, and I am working with the loom at about navel height. And thirty-whatever eyes. It is impossible to /find/ all of the individual first-row stitches. Which means that the best I could do is uneven and gappy and really stretched in one corner. And there's the stupid ridge, and and and.
As I said. I am not happy.
One of the things I really like about the turkish/fig8 toe cast-on is that it's essentially invisible. The increases you can see, but it flows better, and there isn't the abrupt switch in knitting direction at the 'seam'; the cast-on "edge" mimics a knit stitch, like grafting does.
And it really fucking frustrates me that I can't figure out how to do it on the loom.
I considered doing a sort of zig-zag cast-on, with loops alternating sides of the [rectangularish] loom. If it were the equivalent of the t/f8 cast on style, I could then knit with appropriate increases, and the cast-on "row" would be hella stretched out, but it's easy enough to tighten up a row by tugging on the stitches. Except I realized that it would have a freaking annoying ladder effect up the sides, because there's a 2 or 3" distance between the two long sides, and this effect would get less drastic as I increase stitches in the toe, but it's still there. And tightening a single row at the edge of the yarn is managable, but tightening the two end stitches for eight rows? Really not going to work.
The perfectionist part of me wants to rip the whole thing out and start again, figuring out some way of placeholdering the cast-on stitches so I don't have to try to grope for them. The lazy part of me says that for one thing, my first several socks are going to be utterly crappy anyway, and for another, the problems aren't as horrible as I think they are.
...the perfectionist side is likely to win out, but I haven't yet taken it off.
On the bright side, I love the colors of the yarn I'm using. It's shades of purple and shades of green, and even though it's not the official name I think of it as vineyard yarn, because the purples are grape-purple and the greens are vine-green and it's just seriously yummy.
(It would also cause problems amongst the Drazi, but seeing as how I don't know any, that's not a problem.)
no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 08:31 am (UTC)Bahahahahahaha. *breathes*
(And apparently the universe is keen on reminding me I ought to be poking at the Drazi-related fic that
no subject
Date: 2010-02-28 08:39 pm (UTC)if so, you could do a row of it, then start with the sock yarn, and when you go back, take off the provisional cast-on and your other stitches would all be ready and easy to grab (i like using a crochet cast-on as a provisional since you can "unzip" it and don't have to fiddle).
that yarn sounds gorgeous!
no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 01:09 am (UTC)And KP has stopped carrying the yarn color but you can see it in the picture on the left here; it's on the right, the one that's abou a third showing. and it looks more aqua on my computer han the yarn actually does; it's a purer green.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 01:53 am (UTC)hmmm. the other thing i can think of is trying to hook an openable stitch marker in each stitch that you'll have to pick up later, so it's easier to grab the stitch. but whether it would really make it easier to get the stitches on the pegs? i dunno.
no subject
Date: 2010-03-01 05:33 pm (UTC)