The Little Knittin' Kitten

I'm almost finished my 4 current WIPs, two of them just need the sleeves and the making up, but unfortunately I seem to have sustained a knitting injury. I have a blister. I knit English style and use the middle finger of my right hand to catch the needle after looping the yarn around it. This has the unfortunate effect of causing a bit of rawness along the side of my finger from rubbing across wool for hours at a time. Because I've been knitting rather obsessively of late (that is to say, every single moment in which my hands aren't doing something else) it was really only a matter of time before I would get a blister. It only hurt a little last night, but it will most definitely get worse if I keep up this knitting pace (I've already ignored it for a day and now have a little bump where before it was just a little red and sore) and so I've decided to take a break from knitting.

Normally when I have a knitting injury that requires me to take a little break (yarn burn on the finger that holds the yarn taught, for example, or sore wrists) I switch to crochet or focus on reading a novel. But I couldn't find a crochet project I like - I usually only crochet baby blankets and no one I know is currently pregnant - and I'm not really enjoying my current novel, so I was in a bit of a pickle. Luckily, 3 of the WIP require some embroidery, so that is keeping me occupied on my trips to work on public transport.

One project is the argyle sweater that I'm knitting for my fiance. I'm doing the zig-zags in duplicate stitch, which I don't really like, to be honest, because I find the stitches don't act like try knit stitches (and why would they? They aren't true knit stitches). However, I made the choice to do it in duplicate stitch because there are 6 zig-zags and the one ball of that colour called for in the pattern only has 2 ends. I would have had to either buy 3 balls of yarn to have enough ends to keep all 6 zig-zags going right in the knitting, or cut the ball into thirds, which severely limits how I can use the remainder yarn when the sweater is done. I'm a bit fanatical about using yarn efficiently and making sure I have the best possible chance of using the leftover yarn for something later. So I stand by my choice.

The other two are a pare of blankets for my friend Allison's twins. They require chain stitch lines criss-crossing all over the blanket. It took a bit, but I eventually got used to embroidering on half-double crochet, which isn't nearly as nice and tight as knitting.

So I haven't knit a stitch all day. I was a little afraid that I might loose the momentum of my Finishitupitus, but I don't think that's likely. Already the little bump doesn't hurt anymore, so I'll just give it another day to go down and then dive back in.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=