127...128...129...wait, was that 129 or 139? Crap. 1...2...3...4...This is when B chimes in and asks - are you ok? No. The answer is no. There is no way you can cast on 299 stitches and still be ok. It sucks. And dental floss on size 8 needles is even worse, especially when that dental floss is really microscopic velcro strong enough to make that guy in the hard hat stick to the big steel girder.
Then you have the added pleasure of working on brand new circular needles, which insist on returning to their original packaged state. When is this ever the case? Things never go back in the box properly after you've taken it out and played with it. How often have you tried to re-fold a map? But, Inox needles...those will go back in the package on their own. You don't even have to ask.
Except for maybe trying to work a lace chart after several cosmos, I can't think of anything more extreme in knitting than casting on for a shawl top down. It took two episodes of Lost (Season 1 from Netflix) before I was done...and then the counting began...
ETA: Ok, I now know of something more extreme: getting to the end of row three of the chart and find that somehow the last four stitches are really comprised of several sets of stitches that were purled together. And you can't tell what is going on because the pattern hasn't been established yet...not as if you could see what's going on anyway through all that "haze". WTF. I have no explanation, but I can tell you this much: 1...2...3...4...
_____________________
Distopia Teammate status:
When I first told Oceania and Forest Floor about Challenge Two, Forest Floor smiled and said she had this one nailed, the competition point would be hers. Casting on 299 stitches? No brainer - extreme. But, then Oceania smiled that evil little smile of hers and said, "I can be extreme, too. You just watch." She turned mean and unfortunately her desire to win was taken out on me. She made my hand cramp again. No numbness in the knitting finger this time, she brought out the big guns: wrist pain.
So, I was about to award this Challenge's point to Oceania for being the "extremest" of my teammates, when I learned a dirty little secret, she had help. It turns out that the wrist pain I had been attributing to Oceania all week was really a bad case of Harry Potter Wrist (wrist pain cause by spending too many hours in a row holding open those ginormous Harry Potter paperbacks with one hand). Given this new information, the point will go to Forest Floor.
Point Total
Oceania: 1
Forest Floor: 1
6 comments:
277... 278.. wait, what number was that?!
I'm going to have nightmares!
Highly recommend a book stand for reading ginormous books! Reading such was killing my wrists, too.
Harry Potter wrist... *laughing* I know exactly what you mean. :)
That's a lot of stitches to cast on! I'm glad you stayed strong. Whew!
When I first started reading this post, I thought you were going to say that while you were counting 135, 136, etc. B was counting 47, 28, 115, etc. I could totally see him doing that to me. Or least he surely would have done something like that when he was about 6 and I was 4, right?
It's not too late to do the rectangular version - only 99 sts to cast on. E-mail me if you need instructions on how to modify your triangle into a rectangle. If you stick with the kidsilk triangle (God bless your little soul), I highly recommend stitch markers and life lines. Also it doesn't hurt to do a swatch in a friendlier yarn to get the hang of the repeats. Godspeed!
Depending on thickness of the yarn you are knitting with then you could use a stitch marker to mark off denominations of 10 sts. If you're doing fine work like the shawl I'm working on then I have thin elastic hair bands which I use.
Scary scary scary!
Post a Comment