The Hubris Avenger strikes again!

There I was, knitting and knitting on the second mitten, cruising right along, feeling all pleased with myself at how fast it was going. I was mentally writing the entry about how good I'm getting about "reading" my knitting so I didn't have to use the excel graph of the pattern, and boy howdy aren't I cool!

I mean, observe!



Cool!

And so, naturally, I was punished by the knitting goddesses! You'd've thought I'd've learned my lesson.

So the ribbing was a little longer in the second mitten (same number of rows = longer cuff? How?!), blocking would fix, surely! Look at me go! Zip zip!



Notice anything missing? Anything at all?

I'll give you a hint. It rhymes with "thumb gusset."

I cursed. I complained. I glared at the lack of thumb. And then I got to share with a friend the joy of frogging a knit. I picked up the stitches and handed it over with instructions to pull the long strands of yarn. Yup, just pull 'em.

I like letting my friends frog things. Paige frogged something for me at one point and she sat there and giggled, ripping out row after row.

Merely forgetting something so trivial as the THUMB and having to rip 12(ish) rows was only the beginning. All yesterday evening I found wrong stitches: blue where white should be, white where blue should be, increases in the wrong row, lost crochet hooks, and so on!

But it's still going, though quite slowly as I've been trounced by my hubris. Again.

I'm not really such a grouchy knitter, it's just that whenever something really good happens then I screw up mightily before I can get the joyous entry into my blog.

And then what did I see this morning? A primer for two-color Norwegian-style mittens by Eunny. It's great! So much excellent information!

That I really could've used back in, oh, September.

Aw.

I also learned that the cuff I "made up" is called corrugated ribbing. Now, knitting has been around for waaaaay too long to presume that there's really anything "new" -- particularly something so, well, intuitive. (Once you hit fair aisle it seems only natural that one would go on to two-color ribbing). Still, though, it's nice to have a few days in which you think that maybe you've done something at least a LITTLE original.

Dear Hubris Avenger,
I am sufficiently humbled. Really. I won't forget this time. Thanks.
Love,
Emily

In other news, I was thinking about making my dad a scarf for Christmas. Nothing too fancy -- chunky baby alpaca in fisherman's rib (which is the only way to go with chunky baby alpaca). Thing was, it's kind of... boring. Lux, yes; but still boring.

My folks have a farmhouse with some land attached, and they love working in the fields/woods/yard, and it being PA, it gets cold. A scarf would work, but baby alpaca is too nice for such things.

So yesterday I graphed out a hat that compliments mom's mittens. Aw. ("Merry Christmas, dad! I got you a sweater! It's from Banana Republic.")

#38. Sometimes I just never learn. But it's still fun!