Fiber Raven Soiree

Stash Fairy

I have to apologize for the quality of my pictures today. After four days of not having to get to work I lost the gene that allowed me to get my act together early enough to be able to adjust for lighting, etc.

The Clock Vest... well, here it is.

One good fudge deserves another.

I neglected to tell you that while knitting the back I realized that there was a one-off error on one side. That is, I had one two stitches extra on the right side than on the left, so to balance the stitches as they were supposed to be, I fudged and decreased on the right while increasing on the left. This was of course after I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out where my mistake was. I looked at all the increases within the V, all the decreases outside the cables-- nada, a head scratcher, thence the fudge.

Well, when I started the right side of the vest yesterday I discovered why the one-off. I was supposed to have put all 13 of the side cable stitches on a holder, plus two of the stitches toward the back, but instead I had only put the 13 pattern stitches on the holder. Well there is NO WAY I'm going to go back and invoke the Sage of Perfection. So I figure when I get to picking up around the armhole I'll do another fudge of some sort that will make itself up when I come to it. Does this make me a bad person?

One-off errors are common in computer programming. Not that you really care, but here's why: Some things, let's call them "arrays" contain a list of items, or elements, that you can refer to by order number. Some languages ask you to start counting with 0, others have you start counting at 1. If you forget to remember which you're dealing with, you may start counting at 1 and forget the 0th element if the array was actually 0-based. On the other hand, if you start counting with 0 on a 1-based array you get some very nice and polite error message (let's call it a "bug") that says something like "You total moron, idiot, imbecile and jerk! A kindergartener would know that you can't do what you did. You are lowest than the lowest caterpillar in the belly of the lowest sandhog in the lowest underwater cave on Earth." But of course the message won't tell you exactly what you did wrong.

I do hope They don't start inventing yarn that spits out debug messages as you knit. My delicate constitution simply could not handle it.

Here's a bad photo of the back.

And here's a bad photo of my progress on the Landscape shawl. I'm up to the point where I will start the seed stitch section. This is what I worked on at the doctor's office yesterday while they were admiring the lovely lividity of my foot and taking pictures of it under more decent lighting.

The foot is only badly bruised and should heal within a week if I promise to wear stiff ugly walking shoes and not go dancing in my spike heels and mini-skirt. (ha)

The Stash Fairy arrived yesterday, very good timing too, as she saved the day! I had remembered, finally, to put a long strand of my first handspun under my pillow with a broken ebony needle and a first edition of the POK, and everyone knows that the Stash Fairy will come the next day if you do this (but only once!).

She brought me really wonderfully red cashmere/silk/wool totalling 1400 yards which I might make a stole from. The cone is blueberry Zephyr (wool/silk), not really black as this bad photo suggests. It is quite lovely and I am thinking of designing a shawl with my friend the Duchess in mind, the Silkworthy Shawl.
Thank you, oh thank you, dear Stash Fairy!!

Posted by Sheila at May 28, 2003 07:39 AM | TrackBack