I Know Why They Call it the Hemlock Ring Blanket

Because it makes you want to drink Hemlock like Socrates.


What is this, you ask? It's the stitch count for the 8 different sections once i got to the second to last repeat of the pattern. As you can see, it's off by a bit. Four of those sections had the same number of stitches, but not one section had the same number of stitches it was supposed to have. This occurred the Saturday before Christmas. So I started tinking back. I didn't know how far I was going to have to go, and since my markers were all in the right spot, I figured that tinking was the best option.


I put the Hemlock Ring Blanket on a bit of a timeout and while I was tinking I made myself a cowl.


It's from Knit 2 Together. I absolutely love it. It's knit out of Malabrigo Worsted and it's the warmest thing. I could live in it for life. I might have to knit a couple more of them so I can wear it with each coat (I just bought a new bright orange snow jacket for when Stan and I go snowboarding in January).

Finishing the cowl gave me enough motivation to get back to the Hemlock Ring. In total, I tinked back 36 rows I think. Here's what my diagram looked like after the fact:


So, I moved inward every time I got back to a row that was right before a decrease row. Good thing I only had to tink back that much, otherwise I'd have to re-do the chart. You'll see there are three sections in the middle that are circled. They're all off by only one stitch so I said to myself "fuckit, I'm just going to fudge that one part." Fudge it I did, and I think it turned out ok. I've been on the right stitch count now for quite a while and I'm almost back to where I was when I noticed things were awry.



In the meantime, I've gotten a little antsy. I realized that now that I have this bright orange snowboarding jacket, I need a hat that will match. Something about light blue and sparkles doesn't seem like it will go well with the orangeness. So I stopped by Knit One, Purl Too in Wakefield, RI when I was home and scored some Elsebeth Lavold Classic AL to knit up into a hat. I found a Lucky 7 hat pattern on Ravelry and cast on. I've got two repeats out of 8 done, and while I was hoping to get it done yesterday on the ride from RI to NY, dawn was way too late and I didn't get a chance to. So I'm still chugging along on it.


So that's all I've got now. I'll leave you with some photos of the Red Sox Socks I knit for Beth. I've given them to her for Christmas so it's safe to post them! I'll probably post some sort of 2008 wrap up soon. It's the best way for me to keep track of what I knit every year. Then I can re-set the status bars on the sidebar.