Thursday, June 28, 2007

Sea Horses and Techniques

I finally managed to get my head around the knitting-with-two-balls thing. I know I said I had my head around it in a previous post, but turns out I actually didn't.

Now that I've worked it out it all seems so simple, but it's that written instruction thing that I obviously have a problem with. See, written instructions to anyone else might look like this:

"to change over to the new ball, knit into the stitch where the other ball is waiting, bring that ball under the ball you have been working with so you *wrap* the two balls, tug the yarn you've been working with slightly - but not too tightly - and continue knitting with the new ball"

To me, it reads like this:

"to change over to the new ball, blah blah blah blah blah, bring the what under the what? and do what with it?"

Now, I had great instructions, and since I have worked it out the instructions I was given make perfect sense and it would seem as though I'm a numnut for not being able to work it out. But really I can blame it on this visual learning thing. I had googled numerous times trying to find a video of some sort that would actually show me what I needed to do, but with no luck. I've also worked out that it helps if you google the correct thing! So after many frustrated hours reading, thinking, googling, I had a revelation. And it was almost like a religious experience! And you know what? I found what I was looking for within a matter of minutes - a video, showing me exactly what I needed to do. Phew.

Can you see where the changeover occurs? You can see it on the inside. It's slightly visible on the outside if you know what you are looking for, and somehow I managed to put the changeover right smack bang in the middle of the front of the garmet *rolls eyes*, but still, it's looking pretty invisible and hopefully this won't cause me too many problems when I split for the legs. I can blame that little mistake on concentrating so hard on the technique that I forgot to put the stitch markers on when I was supposed to and then completely forgot to factor in the yarn changeover when I eventually did put the stitch markers on *more eye rolling*.

Anyway, the Seahorse Dancing longies are absolutely off and running now. Just heading into the gusset, and if I play my cards right I could even have these finished before the weekend is out. Fingers crossed.

3 comments:

Sam said...

Well done on learning a new technique! Would love to check out the video link :)

Lou's Mum said...

geez, now you got me! I think I bookmarked it. can I put links in here? I'll try....

http://vickidesigns.homestead.com/Intarsia.html


It's a video for Intarsia (the one on knittinghelp.com didn't work for me :( ) because my revelation was that it would probably be the same except not a different colour, right?! It was one of the first links at the bottom of that page anyway. and it's working out pretty well, although my tension on the changeover is a bit skewiff so it's noticeable to a point, but not enough to be really bad :) I just need more practice!

Anonymous said...

wow, you are mind blowingly clever! i am in awe :D

And instructions look like that for me too - snap ;)

s