I haven’t posted for a few days, basically because everything crafty seems to be kicking my butt at the moment.

First the Pirate Mittens put the boot in. I finished the first one bar the thumb and discovered that the cuff was bigger than the hand, and the hand was too small to comfortably fit my hand in it. I’d also swapped the sides I knit the yarns from – one on the left continental style, one on the right english style – three times and my tension must be different for the two styles as the black stitches were bigger or smaller depending which side I knit it on.

To top it off, I realised the pattern chart is shaded in reverse. The white squares are meant to be black, and the black are meant to be white. WTF? Is this some sort of piratey joke? So I frogged the entire mitten and started again, using smaller needles for the cuff and larger ones for the hand, and always keeping the yarns on the same side.

It looks much better in ‘reverse’.

As you know from my last post the Swirled Pentagon Pullover was doing some butt kicking of it’s own. After it had dried I tried it on.

If I hoick up the sleeves to the position they’re supposted to be in, the bat wing problem is almost non-existant. So I think I can safely conclude that the too-large pentagons are the problem. And they’re too big solely due to the fact that the designer (or editor) hasn’t a clue about US to metric conversion.

To fix this I should knit up a separate pentagon on 5mm needles and see if it comes out the right size. If not, I’ll knit it on 4.5 mm needles. Then I’ll have to unpick the top of the sleeves, unravel all the pentagons and knit them again.

I’m not quite up to facing that yet. I’m still at the cursing the designer stage. An what with the reversed out pirate mitten chart discovery on top, there’s been much cursing of designers lately.

As if that wasn’t enough, the weaving has been kicking my butt too.

After warping up the loom ready to weave some place mats out of the free handspun from s’n’b, I discovered that the stickiness of the yarn made the warp threads stick together, and it made for a very open weave. So I unwove what I’d done, skeined up all the yarn again, and washed it. When it was dry I tried again. No stickiness problem, but still an overly open weave. I’m thinking maybe this needs a more widely spaced warp. Maybe in linen or cotton instead of the wool I’d used. Since I figured this was going to take some experimentation, I’m not minding the butt kicking.

But the trouble is, warping up up the loom takes time, and taking off a warp and tying it back on later takes even more time. Better to start something else. So I took out some purple varigated yarn my mum bought me in New Zealand last year, for my birthday.

I’m thinking pillows, or a topper for the sideboard, to go in the guestroom.

And the guest room! It’s kicking my butt too. Just how many coats of Vivid Orange does it take to get a good flat colour? Sheesh!