“String of Expletives” …Do my non UK readers know what it means? A String of Expletives is an outpouring of several very rude words and curses, one after another. That explains my recent knitting experiences perfectly. It also would make a great name for a knitting blog with the pun on “String”!!

The Blanket Jacket (yuk) is still sitting in the corner of the knit room in a sulky heap, waiting for me to unravel it – A few curses are uttered each time I see it…

So to cheer myself up (and stop the swearing) I cast on this little cutie…

From Zigzags

It’s called Vence from Rowan 51 and it’s  in Rowan’s Panama and Kidsilk Haze. I bought the Panama in cream on a whim while out shopping, secure in the knowledge that I had oodles of lovely colours of Kidsilk Haze(KSH) to choose from in stash.

After a happy afternoon with my sister, playing with all the pretty yarn, we chose this combination – scrummy huh? Don’t you love that pattern too?

From Zigzags

It started going wrong from here on 🙁

In the Rowan pattern the white is KSH and the red is Panama.  I decided to cast on with my cream Panama to give a bit more structure to that ziggy-zaggy edge as I feared the KSH would just curl.  What I didn’t realise was that meant I would have a mainly purple KSH top half without some fiddle-faddle. – Never mind – I could cope with that – one more or fewer stripes would do it…(some mumblings but no hearty swearing)

I cast on while at the Guilty Knitters while I had a really nasty headache which was very stupid . The pattern isn’t that hard – left and right decreases…few stitches left and right increases either side of a central stitch….I got the pattern all wrong after a few rows….TWICE!!!….. (More expletives)

I started a third time and this time I got the hang of the pattern 🙂

I even knit some on the train but it’s not ideal train knitting – long complicated rows which don’t end neatly when I get to my destination – I was that woman sitting on the empty train at Charing Cross, frantically trying to finish a row 😉

And then I did all the decreases for the waist shaping and got to the bit where you do the thin stripes across the chest….

…It looked wrong….

…kinda short…And not enough stripes….

From Zigzags

“Grrrr”, I said, “The stupid Rowan pattern must be wrong!” (A string of expletives worthy of the most salty of sailors was uttered)

I checked the pattern…

The pattern was crystal clear and totally different to the way I’d done the decrease!! All my fault. I had totally misread the pattern … 🙁

By this point I was speechless. No expletives. I flung the wrongly knit zigzags in the knit room and went to bed in a huff, giving Kitty and Ziggy full permission to pounce, shred and kill it.

So here’s what I’m going to do.

1. Knit a nice quick easy project to calm my knitting psyche (details in the next blog post!)
2. Do the easy project when I have a headache, I’m tired or on the train.
3. Completely unpick the zigzags and start again
4. Cast on with the right yarn so I don’t have to mess with the stripe sequence.
5. Try and use less expletives!