Make a Gauge Swatch!

Take time to make a gauge swatch!

Every knitting pattern has this advice.

The only problem is that I do make the gauge swatch being ever so careful to keep my tension just so, then something happens when I make the garment.  I end up with arms too long or the large I thought I was knitted suddenly turns out to be a small.

My problem is that I usually knit in front of the TV, multitasking while I k2, p1, 2lc, p1 k2 while watching Gibbs & his team chase down some bad guy or Sam and Dean hunting down a demon.  All this action on TV counteracts the calming effect of knitting and sometimes I lose my place.

Pictured below is a vest I just finished.  The 2 x 2 ribbing is a no brainer, but the eyelet top was another thing.  It is my first project done from a chart.    I unraveled both sides at least twice.  Maybe more. 

Vest I made using Vanna's Choice in Purple Mist.

It's no so much achieving calmness from the knitting as it's going into the knitted with the calmness. Anxiety, excitement, and other emotions will show up in knitting.  Excitement and other tensing emotions can cause an tightening of gauge therefore what might have been a 4 stitches per inch gauge suddenly becomes 6 or 8 stitches per inch.  Feeling too relaxed and comfortable can result in the opposite of two few stitches per inch thus the extra long arms of a sweater I once made. 

Although not perfect, I am proud of this vest.  I learned that a bit of patience is very helpful, that knitting is not a race.  Slow and steady will get it done.

Moral of the story is that same as the Hare and the Tortoise.

Lost then Found

I had a lovely pair of earrings that I wore to my cousin's wedding a year ago.  By the time I got home I could locate only one.  I was sad because I had worn this pair just this one time.  They went so perfectly with so much of my wardrobe with the greens & purples.

Last week I was at a jewelry party and decided to order a new pair.  The lone one I would make into a necklace.

Today, in a deep clean of my room, beneath a pile of rubble I found the missing earring!

The new pair should be in soon.  I think I may trade it in on the matching necklace.

I learned a long time ago that there is no sense in wasting energy fretting over what is lost.  Like the past, it is gone and that cannot be changed.  If it's meant to be, it will turn up again when I least expect.

Thank you, Universe, for the little surprise.

Winds of change

There have been times in my life when I could feel "the winds of change" coming.  By that, I had a feeling that some changes, big and small, were going to happen around me.  People change jobs, move, whatever.  And I can feel them today.


I wonder where they will blow me to this time.  I wonder if they will be gentle breezes signaling a new hairdo or color.  Or the hurricane forced winds that upset my life.


I know if I try to do the Mary Poppins thing my umbrella gets turned inside out. That thing of hers had to be reinforced with steel or titanium rods.  So guess I'll just hold on to my proverbial hat and hope for the best.