Better than Juggling

Oh, this is fun.














I admit I was a little nervous, after my experiences with feather-and-fanning. (Which remain, alone together but abandoned, in the bottom of one of the little Lantern Moon bags. I keep telling myself I'll pick them up again. Later.) Then all the fun went out of Branching Out at about the seventh repeat. I began to have intimations that I would never become a Real Knitter. I would be relegated forever to the rectangular, the one color per row. Doomed to be the knitterly equivalent of a dilettante. This two-colors at a time stuff, though, is like Cirque du Soleil for knitting. I almost expect flashing lights to accompany my astonishing feats of skill and daring. If there were a Flying Karamazov Brothers of knitting, this is the kind of stuff they would be doing. (If you have Quicktime, you can see them in action here.)

Look at this. It looks like it's supposed to look. The little center motifs delineated by the diagonals. This is heady stuff. Even the pseudo-seams the purl stitches create look like they're supposed to. Admittedly, probably because all the purl stitches are created with the main color, which I am now carrying in my right hand. In other words, I haven't figured out what I was doing when I thought I was purling while carrying the main color in my left hand. One new skill at a time, people.





















While in the throes of all this excitement, I realize I still have to acknowledge a debt to Branching Out. It made me learn how to read a chart. I cannot imagine trying to do stranded colorwork using written directions. K2 in MC, k1 in CC, K1 in MC, K1 in CC, K1 in MC, K3 in CC. I believe the phrase we're looking for here is "just kill me now." Accompanied my banging one's head against the table top while deciding that reading is a perfectly acceptable habit. And so is bungee jumping. Or taking naps.

That's not all that's been going on here. We have serious progress on Clare's Sweater. I wish I were a better photographer. This yarn is so lovely, and it keep coming out looking like the navy version of plain vanilla. Front and Back are almost ready for the the arm-hole shaping.














The Endpaper Mitts are ready for the thumb-gusset.














It's going to be an all-shaping-all-the-time weekend here. Binding off at the end of rows. Raised bar increases.

Who needs flaming torches?