Saturday, February 2, 2008

Conquering Moebius

I’m proud to say that I have succeeded in doing the Moebius cast on from Cat Bordhi’s book, A Treasury of Magical Knitting. Not only that, I have knit one complete row. It was hard as all hell but it has been quite a learning experience. Cat's instructions were spot on; the trouble was me.
I received my pink Denise Interchangeable needle set on January 22 and my fingers had been itching since then to try something, but what to try? Contemplating it while knitting my son’s dragon scarf, dreaming about it at night, can you tell I’m a little knitting obsessed? Okay, finally settled on a golden colour Décor with 4.5 mm needles. If I had been smart and thought about it, I
would have put a smaller needle on the left hand side as the book and website suggested to make sliding stitches off the needle easier but in my haste, I of course wasn’t thinking logically. Another thing I did which made this more difficult was that I made my needle length 58” instead of 47” (the book suggests 47-60). The finished garment I’m attempting will be ~48” in circumference; some might now see my problem. I am now reminded of one of the reasons I never liked using a circular; my garment circumference is smaller than my needle circumference and I had extra cable to push and shove my knitting over to get to knit it. Once again, in my haste, I was not reasoning too well. Given that this was my first attempt too, if I had cast on and knit a bit more loosely, that might also have helped. I’m hoping that as I keep knitting (your work actually expands in between the cable ring; you are essentially knitting from the spine of the moebius outward), the extra material in between will allow me to shift my stitches on the needle more easily.

Oh well, live and learn. For now, back to finishing my son’s dragon scarf.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I knit Mischief's kitty bed from a Cat Bordhi book and it takes a special leap of faith, that's for sure! I didn't even bother trying to wrap my head around it (or is it through it?) I just did what she said to do.