Mutant Supermodel

Today is Wednesday. On this blog, that generally means I particpate in Tami’s WIP Wednesday and show you photos of my fantastic works in progress. I actually have two WIPs but only photographed one because I left the other at home and forgot to take photos of it before leaving the house. I am doing one knit project and one crochet project and frankly, we need a chat.

I mentioned Mother’s Day in my last WIP post as well as ambition and special yarn for special projects for special ladies. So, the yarn came in on Saturday which was exactly two days ahead of schedule which I took as a sign from the heavens that perhaps I’d been overly negative and doubtful and I was indeed meant to create those presents I’d fantasized over.

Not to mention over the weekend, my mother came and glimpsed the complete Hi-Five towel (wait until you see it) and was just gushing how amazing it’d be for Abuela… who was not the intended recipient. However, it turns out I will not be seeing the Intended Recipient on Mother’s Day after all or any time relatively soon. So, I scratched Intended Recipient off the gift list and found I now only had to make three more projects instead of the initially planned four.

Another sign from the heavens!

So it was I cast on Summer Flies. And ripped it back. And cast it on. And ripped it back. And did this over and over again for about six times total before I finally “got it”. Boy was I out of knitting shape. And even when I “got it” I didn’t really “get it” as evidenced by the first section of “Butterflies” which I now refer to as “Abstract Lace” instead.

This project was giving me a major headache. I had to pay major attention to what I was doing. I kept having too many stitches or too few stitches and I’m still pretty sure I am not doing certain stitches properly but my Stitch n Bitch book is nowhere to be found and there was no way in staplers I am ripping anything back at this point to fix a silly mistake. 

So then, in what seems to be an emerging pattern this week, divine entities once again intervened and made me take a break. I know you’re wondering how divinity can interfere with something like a knitting project so let me enlighten you– the divine beings took the page of the pattern I was working on and did who knows what to it. All I know is it was nestled in my project bag one moment and the next moment, it wasn’t. They didn’t even have the decency to turn it into Dove dark chocolate.

Now, keep in mind I have no internet at home or on my phone. I was stuck at home because Baby was sick. There was no way to keep working on the project. But I could not possibly stomach the idea of the Mother’s Day deadline slamming towards me and not working on someone’s gift.

So it was that I decided to begin hooking Clapochet. I was so excited about this project. It had that nice airy thing that I was looking for in a shawl and someone on the message boards assured me it was “actually super fast once you got the hang of it.” Apparently, I haven’t gotten the hang of it.

I did rows 12 and 13 at least four times and I still ended up with two few stitches which I just added to the end of the row because this pattern had frustrated the bubbles out of me! I reminded myself about those ladies that intentionally work at least one mistake into their handicrafts because they dare not attempt perfection and mock the gods or something like that. It turns out, you have to REALLY pay attention to what you’re doing when you’re working on Clapochet.

Oh sure, you think it’s a nice pattern to just zone out to but if you do, you will surely forget to chain one at the end of at least one treble or you’ll do two trebles in a chain space thinking one’s actually a treble. This pattern is stressing me the flowers out.

I have to count the end of each row and I’m not always where I need to be. Not to mention, I do have perfectionist tendencies and because, unlike knitting, I have no qualms ripping back crochet work it’s really hard to just plow ahead instead of going back a row or three to fix a mistake. No really, I did that. I ripped back three rows.

Ok two and two thirds, but if you round up….

I’m certainly not completely deterred from Mother’s Day handmade gifts but I’m back to last week’s wariness. It is especially helpful that I actually like the way Summer Flies is (mostly) coming out and I’m adoring my Clapochet even though I didn’t do what everyone else did and am using solid colored yarn. But the color is gorgeous and the yarn is so super duper soft. We’ll just have to see what else the gods have in store for me I guess.