lostpurl

Strange magic,
Oh, what a strange magic,

Oh how I loved ELO, I have some very pleasant memories connected to that song. None of which I think suitable to a knitting blog. The song is stuck in my head again.
The sick people have returned to their appointed places. The knitting can begin again in earnest.
The strange magic here is the illusion that ribbing is traveling diagonally across a stockinette background. I fiddled about with a gauge swatch, while making endless cups of tea and bring soup to my patients. Just call me Nurse Ratched :-) All part of the 70's theme. I liked the look of the traveling stitches. I was not crazy about making 2 zillion left twists. Scrap the swatch. Thought a bit. Then I tried right twists moving to the left. You get a very sharp diagonal line. Nice. This is one of Barbara Walkers stitch patterns in the Second Treasury. She directs you to move right twists towards the left. I didn't care that much for the look. The stitches look loose and a bit sloppy. It couldn't be the knitter could it? We shall leave the knitter to her illusions :-)
This morning as I waved them off, telling them to come home early if they felt ill (what a liar) I cast on 72 stitches using some Opal Uni and 2.00 mm needles. I think this gauge is a bit firm. I would probably go up to a larger size needle. I did a fancy ribbing. and proceeded to work the diagonal ribbing. There comes a point with diagonal patterns, where you have to decide if you are going to drive yourself mad, transferring stitches from one needle to the next, to keep in pattern. Or just declare a front and a back. As you end a repeat on the front, you don't try and continue it around the back. Remember I am working on two circs. I think it would be even more madding if you were working with dpns. I repeated the stitch pattern twice, and was just working up a full head of steam, when one of my patients arrived back home. Looking for tea, cough medicine and sympathy. I swear American homemakers are the best actresses in the world. Meryl Streep could take lessons from us :-P In any case the knitting had to be put aside.
The stitch pattern is great. It creates a dense but not inelastic fabric. If you tolerance for twists stitches is limited, it would be great in fingerless gloves or wrist warmers. For socks I don't think I would take it anyplace but the cuff, or you would never get your sock inside you shoe. But would make really toasty slipper socks.
Bets this is the pattern stitch I told you about. I might use for the design thing.

gauge swatch


note the wonky right side. this is what happens when you try to carry the pattern around the sock. The stitches get pulled out of shape and it really looks bad.



I am going to frog the blue sample later. 72 stitches gives about a 7 1/2 inch diameter. Sort of average. And that is 10 spi

A word about the sick people. One of them drove to Richmond (95 miles away)on Sat to take pictures of a Confederate cemetery in the rain. The other one ate leftover Lasagna for lunch, turning his nose up at soup. I think it is time to declare that the sick people need to move on with their lives :-)