John brought me some flowers the other day, and they are so bright and colorful, I thought I’d share them. All of us can use something cheerful in our lives from time to time. Today is a somewhat gloomy, rainy day here. We had a terrible rain a while ago. Peaches stayed inside only while the storm was at its worst. When it began to slacken, she went out to lie under the car and watch the storm. Brave kitty!
The Italian Doily Experiment
I finished the Italian doily. I am not thrilled with it or the Italian book. I think I figured out the symbols, etc., okay. I don’t think I goofed there; however, I’m sure if I did, someone will tell me. The thing is, there were several errors in that tiny chart! (This is in Lavori artistici a calza 11.)
This is not an unusual pattern, but I thought I’d try it in Italian to see if I could read the charts, etc., in the book. To that extent, I think the experiment was a moderate success. I found the first mistake, or maybe it was a misunderstanding on my part, in the first two rows of the chart. The pattern said to cast on 8 stitches; however, the next pattern row called for 16 stitches. I thought maybe something was wrong in my translation of the opening paragraph there, so I did what most knitters would do. I made the extra stitches with a “make one” from the row below between every stitch. That gave me 16 stitches.
Everything sailed along fine until I got to row 12; it left me with 18 stitches per repeat on the needle, but row 13 wanted to use only 17 of them. Row 13 looked perfectly balanced the way it was charted. At the end of row 13 I was left with 19 stitches per repeat. This rocked along okay until I got to row 17; suddenly that extra stitch I’d gotten rid of was needed to work the row. From there on, the knitting was charted all right. I made some changes over these anomalies, fudging, until I got the chart done, but it was irritating to find the charts wrong. If I were making it over, I’d just leave that extra stitch in the chart. Also, the crocheted edging was graphed awkwardly–it’s uneven to no purpose that I can see. I just crocheted off the last row in groups of two and that was fine. I would suggest that anyone attempting to use this book be very careful about the charts. You may find other mistakes. Go into it with your eyes open.
The results are okay, but I’m glad I didn’t tackle a large doily with no more preparation than I made with this small one. I should have examined the chart a lot more carefully. It’s obvious I didn’t take a lot of time with this one. Anyway, here it is, with all its warts. I made it with size 10 cotton on size 0 US needles. It measures about 5.5″ across. (I don’t know why I could knit with the size 0 needles this week, and I couldn’t when I was making the Lyra. Maybe it’s because I made the Lyra out of size 30 thread.)
I think working with really good patterns has spoiled me!
Cats
I got a package in the mail today, but I waited to throw the packing away until after lunch. Cleaning up, I was taking a plate back to the kitchen, so I grabbed the big box at the same time to take to the utility room. I planned to take it outside later. I tried to put the plate on something in the utility room while I juggled the box, and I dropped the plate. The utility room is close to the litter box, and Lucky was in it when the plate fell. The plate landed with a huge crash and smashed into a million pieces. Lucky shot out of there like a bullet. I cleaned the broken plate up and went into the den. Lucky met me at the door. “Yeow, yow-yow!” he told me loudly and in no uncertain terms. Then he went back to the utility room and repeated, “Yeow, yow-yow!” I think it was pretty obvious he was ticked at me for scaring him, and he was telling me off! He hadn’t forgotten. You can’t ever get by with anything around cats.