Thursday this week was That Kind of Day. My attempt to find a flat in Dublin wasn't going well. I was seeing a lot of grungy, mouldy places with barely enough space for a spinning wheel, never mind my beloved. Frustrated and unable to concentrate on work, I pulled out the Avast cardigan I'm making him and tried to knit. After about eight inches of raglan decreases I had been starting to feel I was really making progress. This sweater is definitely an act of love: miles and miles of stocking stitch in rough pebble-grey wool at DK weight. He didn't like the cable so I replaced it with some ribbing at the bottom of the sweater, but since then it's been straight stocking the whole way. So you can imagine my despair when I finally noticed that the left and right sides of the front were definitely not what you would call even. I counted. Thirteen stitches of not-even. A few of those were missed decreases, but I knew I wasn't that forgetful.
No. Bored by the stocking stitch, I'd gotten careless. I forgot a key step involving some underarm binding off. I studied the sweater. I wondered for a while how Timo would feel about an off-centre cardigan. And then I frogged. Eight long inches. 50-odd rows at about 300 stiches a row, all wound into a nice fat ball of grey wool once more with the spit joins still intact.
I've managed to knit an inch on it since then. Every time I pick it up, I hear the sound of one frog laughing.
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Why a Nut and an Insect?
Fuechsin, German feminine noun for fox. The kind that roams your back garden at night, scavenging your best yarn... oh wait, that's not right. See also the fox and the hedgehog...
For years my family had close links to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, which is thick with foxes. My mother once brought me a t-shirt with the inscription: 'North fox live in Hokkaido. We eat a nut and an insect and we live.'
And why not?
For years my family had close links to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, which is thick with foxes. My mother once brought me a t-shirt with the inscription: 'North fox live in Hokkaido. We eat a nut and an insect and we live.'
And why not?
3 comments:
Nice new blog! I'm so sorry to hear about the sweater. I will love it a lot though, I swear...(and you, too, of course)!
T
You know, I've always wondered where the name of your blog came from.
Well that and why there were cartoon foxes on nearly everything coming from Hokkaido.
Don't think of laughing frogs. Think of how wonderful a name for a cardigan (or anything for that matter) Avast is. Instead of miles and miles of stocking stitch, imagine it as the soft undulation of the sea that has greeted mariners for ages. Dream up a little sailor story as you knit (one without laughing frogs). But don't forget to keep marking down where you are in the pattern. Think of those as shift changes for the deck watch. :)
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