Something new

(Before I start, thanks Averil for reminding me that moving is done all the time and that I, and others, have survived before. It really did help.)

I've managed to calm myself down somewhat about the whole moving thing. I took stock of the situation and realized that this is probably the cushiest move I've ever made. We can keep the room here in Dublin with our stuff (and, more importantly, the cat!) for as long as we need to. It's cheap, so that's no problem. (I never thought I'd be 30, married, and in shared housing, but it made living on one income possible, and we even managed to save up some money.) The Limey had the good sense to ask his new employers for relocation expenses, so not only will they pay for the move, but they'll pay for us to go over there and look for housing. So we're doing that next week. I realized that the worst case scenario meant we'd have to live in a business hotel or B&B for a few weeks while we keep our stuff here in Dublin, and we have the money to cover that. So what was I worried about again?

Still, there was a bit of stress, and I realize it was probably not the best time to learn stranded colourwork, but Lien had recommended some fair isle by Eunny Jang a while ago, and I really liked the idea (thanks!) so I started on the Endpaper Mitts. New technique + careful tension control requirement + stress = not the best work I've ever done.

I did a few repeats of the pattern while trying to train myself in stranding. It's like learning to knit all over again. I tried to do it two-handed, but could not keep even tension on my right hand no matter how hard I tried. So then I did it with both colours in my left hand, first with both colours over my index finger, then with one over the index finger and the other over the middle finger. This last method is what I eventually settled on. It still looked crap, but I decided to just go with it.

Like everyone said, blocking does help with the colourwork, as you can see here:


The mitt on the bottom has been washed and blocked; the mitt on the top hasn't. However, no amount of blocking can hide the fact that I had no clue what I was doing.


Quite lumpy and uneven. The weird thing is that it's just the purple that seems lumpy to me. Obviously that could be due to my not tensioning correctly with one of my fingers, but the other mitt was done with the colours reversed, and it's still the purple that looks weird to me. I made sure to always carry the pattern colour over my middle finger and the background colour over my index finger. So I don't know what's up with that.

The reverse side looks alright to me, but, then again, I don't know what correctly-tensioned stranded colourwork is supposed to look like on the wrong side.


Perhaps someone with experience in this could tell me if it looks obvious that I'm carrying one colour or the other too loosely or too tightly. I have no clue.