WIP Wednesdays - See Saw Shrug

Only another 5 hexipuffs knitted since last Wednesday - I'm slacking off... On the other hand, that means I only have another 15 to go, so I can also see the light at the end of the tunnel! Which is good, as I've promised my friend to have the rug finished by November 3rd - should be plenty of time, as long as I don't slack off completely ;)

I've gotten quite a bit further on the See Saw shrug though. Last week I'd only just gotten the ruff on the right sleeve done. This time I'm almost through the back!
(it's a bit hard to tell, but it's knitted in one piece, sleeve-back-sleeve. I'm just about to start the second sleeve)
I'll be seeing my sister again on September 14th, which ought to give me plenty of time to finish.

Since I'm on the subject - a few knitting anecdotes to bug you with ;)
* My church had a lunch meeting Sunday before last. I'd brought my knitting to get another hexipuff done during the meeting. I'd finished one and was casting on for the next one, when one of the leading ladies in the congregation suddenly noticed what I was doing. She's in her 70s and has probably been knitting for 60+ years. She saw me casting on for the magic loop and exclaimed, "Maria, what ARE you doing?" Apparently she had never seen that way of casting on before ;) I explained what I was doing and how it was supposed to work and she seemed to accept it as being a proper method and not just me not knowing any better ;)

* Mum hadn't seen that way of casting on before either and hadn't heard of the magic loop technique. Since she's been knitting for my entire life I felt just as chuffed when I discovered I knew something about knitting that she didn't, as I did when I was able to answer a computer question my dad had ;)

* Thursday evening as I was knitting the see saw shrug, I discovered I had made a mistake a few rows down. I'd switched to stockingette stitch for the back, and had accidentally knitted where I should have purled (or purled where I should have knitted... can't remember which). It was only 10 stitches, and a couple of rows down, so instead of ripping it down, I figured I'd try the "dropped stitch" technique. It worked like a charm :-D I dropped the stitches down three rows (one at a time! didn't dare try several at once without a life-line), turned it around and brought it back up again. My pride when I discovered I couldn't tell the difference from the "knitted" stitches was palpable... and I didn't have anybody to share it with!!! DH had no clue of the feat I'd just accomplished, so I had to tell him "I just did a good thing!" in order to get acknowledgement. Really not the same as telling people who actually understands ;)

* Sunday afternoon I joined a knitting event closeby. I had a great time, and will definitely be showing up again. At the event some of the others started talking about different ways of making a purl stitch. I listened with great interest because the tension of my purl stitches is noticeably different from that of my knit stitches. It doesn't matter much when knitting an entire piece flat, but if I knit parts in the round and parts flat, the difference shows - even after blocking and agitating (at least in some yarns). One of the others mentioned that she had the same problem, so she'd taught herself how to knit backwards! Meaning that when knitting flat, she never turned the needles, she just switched the yarn from her left hand to her right and 'knit' backwards! Of course I had to try that, so when I arrived home that evening, I picked up the shrug and spent the remainder of the evening trying to get my hands to cooporate when knitting backwards! It was extremely frustrating at first, as I couldn't work up any kind of speed, so it was painfully slow, but even after the first row of knitting backwards, I could SEE the difference, and it definitely looked a lot better. I'm still nowhere near as fast when knitting backwards as when knitting forwards, and getting the tension of the string right is still an issue, but I can definitely see improvements, so I'm going to keep trying.

But it's funny, really... since I'm left-handed, one would think that knitting left-to-right would be easier for me than knitting right-to-left ;)

... and then it struck me that I'm learning the first step necessary for knitting fair isle (knitting with the yarn in the wrong hand), and I suddenly paled a bit... ;) but, but, but... this! (Although that would involve me getting up my nerve to try my hand at steeking as well, and I'm not sure I'm anywhere NEAR that! :-O )

As always, I'm playing along at Tami's Amis.