So that’s a quote from the movie “The Three Amigos” in case you didn’t know – funny flick and a family classic in our house – Martin Short, Chevy Chase, and Steve Martin.

I now have a plethora of knitting needles.  I became frustrated last month that I didn’t have a set of 10 1/2 double pointed needles… and realized I only had 1 pair of double pointed needles period (because WalMart only carries size 3 double pointed needles. Period. What is up with that?). So anyway… the only 10 1/2’s I could find on line were like $8 and if I was going to pay that plus shipping then I’d drive my happy rear to either Evansville or Russelville and give the not-so-local-yarn-shop my money.

Frustrated, I did a search for Huge Knitting Needle Lot – and lo’ found one with a 120+ needles – most of which were double pointed! So I bid, and I won, and for about $35 got roughly 40 sets of needles – plus a vintage canister needle case, a set of cable needles, and a set of stitch holders.

FABU!

Vintage Knitting Needle Cannister

Vintage Knitting Needle Cannister - With Needles

 Completely unimportant – but when you move the cannister around it sounds like a rain stick!

Knitting Needle Bag

Vintage Straight Knitting Needles

Vintage Double-Pointed Needles

Vintage Circular Needles

Vintage Cable Needles and Stitch Holders

 With all these needles I needed a way to figure out what I had… so I downloaded an nifty little app onto my ITouch called Ewe Stash.  It’s $2.99 (most I’ve spend on an app) but so far it’s really handy! You can inventory your knitting needles, your crochet hooks, and your yarn. So far I’ve only entered the knitting needles but I inputted 51 sets of needles in about an hour.

Ewe Stash App

51 sets of needles! 

I’m up to 17″ on the vest back and 13″ on the shawl.  I’ve also gotten faster on the Shawl – it now only takes me 3 hours per section (cable cross to cable cross) instead of 4.  Whew! I’ll take what I can get! The first progress report can be seen here.

Pasa Doble 13"

Kimono Vest 17"

I’ve made it to 12″ on the Kimono Vest – 12 more inches to go on the back and I’m thinking I should have bought another ball of purple… hopefully the yarn dosen’t disappear from Joanne’s sales floor. Luckily this project is simple enough that I can work on it while watching TV and driving too and from work (when I’m not ranting at my carpool coworking about the things that go on in our workplace – why can’t I win the lottery so I can stay home and make beautiful things all day!?!).  It makes one long for a Zombie Invasion so you could hole up for a month or two and knit while the Zomb’s starve to death (by 28 days later rules anyway).  Ah, Zombies….

I was so proud!

So I promptly bought the pattern and we shopped the rest of the day for nice yarn I could actually afford (because I’m po’). Luckily we found a sale at Joanne’s for buy 1 get 1 half off – we originally thought it said buy 1 get 1 free – which had me positively drooling, but we reread the sign and pouted about it.  Of course we still had to argue at the register because the sale price didn’t come up, I volunteered to go check it again – if I’m wrong, I’m wrong – but the manager just ok’d it and we went on our way. The yarn is Country by Caron – it’s a 25% Merino Wool/75% Acrylic Blend. I’m not wild about acrylic, but it does have the Merino in it. I’m hoping the acrylic base will make it more abuse tolerant (I’m mean to my clothes and assume everyone else is too). The main color is #0014, Deep Purple and the accent is a white #0007, called Naturally.

It’s a fairly simple pattern – or so it seems – the lady at Knit Wits said not to bind off the individual pieces, just put them on a holder, and when I’m ready she’ll show me how to do a 3 needle bind off. Yay! (And yes I feel guilty for not buying my yarn from her – but in my defense I did buy the pattern and a ball of yarn for another project there – I just can’t buy multiple skeins of yarn without a sale price!).

Anyway – I quickly got started and was making decent progress on the back using my funky plastic knitting needles from the 70’s (that I got at the Salvation Army for $0.60!) when I made a mistake…

I set my knitting down and left the room.

And my 90 pound Labrador used my project box as a stepping stool to get up on the couch (like he really needed the boost).

And shattered my funky knitting needle (of course it wasn’t the empty one, it was the one holding all the dang stitches).

Then, to top it all off – I didn’t have another pair of needles in that size.

I’ve been so irritated about it that I’ve been torturing myself with the Pasa Doble Shaw this whole time (see my previous post). It’s been sitting there,  just like this, for almost 3 weeks!

But I have finally left my aggravation behind me, bought new needles and am willing to try again during ‘tv time’ tonight.

On attempt # 2 when I ran out of stitches before I ran out of pattern – that was because I didn’t *read* the directions – I glanced at them, assumed I knew what I was doing, and quickly screwed it up!

So with this latest – and actually successful try – I stopped when I got to the cables, studied attempt #1 (which I did keep – like I said I would), read, read, and re-read the directions and what do you know. It worked. Like a charm. Or really, it worked like the directions said it would!

So – lessons from this:

1. Judy B is a goofball.
2. Judy B has problem taking direction when she thinks she knows it all (this was demonstrated in school as well).
3. Judy B is a goofball.

Also – this pattern is not for the social knitter. You cannot carry on a conversation while doing this thing, the stitches change to frequently. In fact you can’t even watch TV if you think you might actually be interested in what’s on or you will lose your place. There is actually a couple of carefully hidden mistakes in this piece – made because I thought I had messed it up (while watching Earth 2100) and in trying to fix the mistake-that-wasn’t, I messed up. Lukily I fixed it, somehow. I think the Knitting Fairy was looking after me – she knows projects don’t make it past the 3rd attempt. (You can read about Attempt #1 here and here).

This project also breaks the cardinal rule of knitting – you must pull tight, tight, tight to keep those bobbles from looking absolutely ridiculous (I think 99% of knitters have to learn to loosen up – and then there’s this pattern!).

So here it is in all it’s glory – Paula D liked it so much she asked about borrowing the pattern… forgetting completely that I was borrowing it from her! Keep your fingers crossed that I can keep this thing together for another 30 inches…

2nd attempt and somehow I ran out of stitches before I ran out of pattern! How does that happen! And I’d done that row right on the burgundy version so I know it’s not the pattern. This screw up is all me, baby!

Dang it! Dang it! Dang it!

The Sulka 60% Merino/20% Alpaca/20% Silk  from Mirasol in the Snow White colorway knits up beautifully however! It makes me want more!

Remember how I mysteriously put my cables on the back of my Pasa Doble shaw? Well I took my knitting and the pattern to the wonderful folks at Knit Wits in Evansville, Indiana (a-not-so-local-yarn-store) and begged for help. The lovely lady (I believe her name was Chris – but I could be wrong because I’m horrible with names) dutifully checked for errata online, read and re-read the pattern and carefully examined my knitting. After about 20 minutes of these she turned to me and said… the cables are fine! It’s the bobbles that are on the wrong side… and she promptly pushed the back through to the other side.

DOH! DOH! DOOOOOH!

That’s what I get for not paying attention to the whole Right Side/Wrong Side bits of the pattern. In theory I shouldn’t have to redo what I’d already done but some of the stitches on the bobbles loosened up on their journey to the other side and they kinda stick out now. So I’m going to tie off this bit of folly and start again.  I may even frame it as a reminder that it’s good to get excited by a pattern but don’t get so excited that you lose your common sense – geez!

By the way – Cindy M and Paula D thought it was hilarious… or maybe they were just laughing at all my irritated expressions when I told them about it….

Two words people – Bobbles and Cables.

I have lost my mind.

Actually it went really, really well… until I got to the cables… and somehow managed to put them on the back of the work. How does that happen? But the rest of stitches came out great (if you don’t look at the pattern and see the first set of Bobbles-that-aren’t – they’re more like a bump in the fabric. But that’s what you get when you only watch half of the how-to video on You Tube). I was using Berroco Comfort yarn 50% Nylon/50% Acrylic in color #9742 (burgundy).

And here’s the cables on the back of the work…

I guess it’s back to You Tube for more videos!