Lessons Learned, But Not in Spinning Class

Lessons learned this week:

1. Hats should be made a little smaller than you need them. Washing a large beehive-style Noro hat to make it softer also makes it even larger. (Next step, felting to try and make it smaller again, thus removing the softness that the original washing gave it.)


2. The best way to make slip stitch edges on a scarf is NOT by slipping the first and last stitch in every other row as I had somehow thought. That resulted in some weirdness along the side where the last stitch was slipped. After much research, I am now slipping the first stitch and knitting the last stitch, and I am doing that in every row. That seems to work much better. [Famous last words.]

Oh yeah. I haven't even blogged the Noro Striped Scarf I am knitting. This is what it looked like when I cast on 31 stitches and did 1x1 ribbing, slipping the first and last stitches in every row.



I have since frogged this, cast on with 39 stitches for a wider scarf, and I am knitting it with my corrected slip stitch edges.

When I first tried this scarf, I was casting on with the pink and purple Poems yarn from my October swap package. No offence to my swap partner, but it's really bad yarn. It's single-ply, meant to be worsted but is more like DK or thinner, and has very little twist in it. As a result, it pulls apart in my hands every 24 inches or so. Horrible, horrible stuff. I have no idea what I will do with it now. Maybe I can double it with another yarn and knit something chunky.

On a different note, I am crazy sick today. I even had to skip the spinning class that I had signed up for. I couldn't even phone in my reason for not being there, since the cold settled in my throat and chest and stole my voice. I was also supposed to be at a holiday dinner for my husband's company tonight, but that's not happening either. I mean, the dinner is still on -- I'm just not going.

Sigh.

One day I will learn to spin my own yarn, but not till next year I guess. Meaning that I will use my credit on this class to sign up for the January class instead. Oh and, speaking of handspun (handspun being the stuff you sign up for a spinning class to learn how to make), I am almost finished the Instant Gratification Scarf that I am knitting with the yarn I bought last week at the grand opening for All Strung Out.



I have no idea how to finish it off nicely, though. I don't think a fringe would do it justice. I was thinking perhaps some crocheted flowers. Or even some knitted ones.