b natural. c sharp.

It’s been a very busy summer and lately I’ve been too busy knitting (with untwisted stitches!) to write, but my friend Amy is doing a great job keeping up her blog even with becoming a first year teacher so I feel guilty. I still don’t have a good entry thought up but I needed to take a break from knitting my first pair of socks. My goal was to finish them and my beaded lace scarf (okay the scarf stitches are still twisted, but I have to finish it how I started) by tomorrow morning for The Ravelympics. Unfortunately lots of things got in the way and although I tried to at least finish my second sock with a sprinters fury, my hand is going numb so I’m throwing in the towel. I decided my health is probably more important than an imaginary contest, but I should be finished in the next few days. I hope to get motivated soon and make a photoblog highlighting the events of this summer that I have yet to write about.

My knitting world has been turned on it’s head and I’ve been in a very dark place for the past week. After partaking in the craft for about 5 years I was informed that I wrap my yarn the opposite way, consequently twisting my stitches. It’s actually a technique that makes the stitches look more like a pattern of little Vs. The untrained eye probably wouldn’t even notice the difference unless it was pointed out, but the little changes make the overall fabric look better.

Getting into the habit of wrapping my yarn in the correct direction hasn’t been too hard, however it’s thrown a lot of other things off. My rows aren’t as tall so I have to knit more on patterns that I’ve already mastered. Also, my purl rows are looser than my knit rows so I have to adjust the tension so they don’t look all wonky. Relearning how to do something I’ve been doing for so long is really frustrating!

I know twisting the stitches doesn’t look bad and I’ve made lots of beautiful things using that technique, but it makes me sad to think all this time I’ve been knitting “wrong.” I’ll be happy once I finish all my current projects that I’ve started with the twisty stitches so I can move on and put these turbulent times behind me. =P