Glitchbrain Explodes Again

Here begins another tale of travel through the Glitchbrain experience and why it ends up producing nothing.

arly in the day on Thursday, October 28th, Mme. G. went downstairs, feeling out of sorts for no particular reason. She carried with her one of her signature blue Pfaltzgraff glasses, the largest she has ever found, from which she frequently drinks and which the pets have learned to look for as an alternate source of the thirst-quenching goodness of water.

Selecting a coaster from the little wire rack, she admired its wooden roundness against the palm of her hand before she set it down and gave it something to care for. The roundness, she saw-- in particular, the top of the roundness-- coincided almost precisely with the alignment of her fingers as they left the main hand.

Sparks flew inside Glitchbrain as she was struck by the meaning of this observation. Why, one could knit a circle... no, two circles, one for the palm and one for the back of the hand, then knit fingers and a thumb, and one would have-- a glove! A glove that was unique, a glove that would fit like no other glove in the universe, a glove that would be fun to make!

Thinking about this, she considered how the circle should be made. The Emily Ocker beginning would put a dense little circle in the center of the palm. This screamed of crucifixion, and did not seem to be a good selection. Aha! What if you made a two-needle short-row circle? You wouldn't have to use tiny dpns in the round, and the circle would be more easily malleable into a palm shape when you started attaching protrusions for fingers!

She found some random 2-ply yarn and cast on 14 stitches. After creating one wedge, she saw that the circle would be too large, so she started over with 10 stitches. This was just right. As she worked she realized that when half of the circle was done, she could simply knit across the whole diameter (because she had used an invisible cast-on) and knit the bottom of the hand in a more traditional manner, meaning that the expected problems with the circularity at the bottom of the hand were dispensed with before they ever happened. Glitchbrain was on a roll.

She finished the first half of the properly sized circle and began to contemplate fingers. But wait! What if, while knitting the circle, she knit the fingers attached at the proper points? By looking at the top of the circle against her hand, she saw that the first wedge would be the side, and the pinkie would begin with the beginning of the second wedge (there are eight wedges in a full short-row garter-stitch circle).

She cast on a third time, and when she got to the second wedge, she cast on another 14 stitches for the pinkie and continued. By the time she had what she thought was a half-finger in garter stitch, the Glitchbrain had wandered yet again. What if, instead of casting on 14 stitches for a pinkie, you cast on 28 stitches for both halves of the pinkie, to be grafted together along the sides later, and also an additional 10 stitches for the other side of the hand? Then you could work the whole glove as one piece and you would not have to worry about grafting finger tips, which weakens them.

This is where Glitchbrain exploded. We could not handle the exploration into that territory. Frantically, we searched out other means of divertisement from the Latest Idea. Oh, look! If you look at the back of your hand, you see the tendons that look like they radiate from the center of a circle! So, the center of the circle would be.... right down there in the middle of your wrist. So, really, your half circle should begin at your wrist, and the last wedge would cover your thumb, which means that....

Do you see how I suffer?

I put my needles down and carefully walked away. Oh sure, that glove design could be perfect and wonderful and revolutionize all glove knitting for the future. But maybe someone else can make it happen. Ze leetle gray cell, she eez tired.

I did this instead. One-inch domino squares from pretty Koigu. Totally useless but very pretty.

Posted by Sheila at October 29, 2004 09:11 AM Posted to | TrackBack