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I’ve been feeling better much but still tired almost all the time. But tired is a million times better than spinning.

I watched the first three parts of an 11 part nature documentary on the Discovery Channel on Sunday evening called Planet Earth. It was spectacular. Super high definition photography from far enough away that the animals were not disturbed or aware of the filming. As one review I read described it, it looks so real, it’s hard to believe it isn’t fake. They got all kinds of “first time such and such has been filmed in the wild” and it is good stuff. It’s brutal at times but always beautiful. I spent most of the three hours with my jaw dropped and every now and then I laughed hysterically. (The babboons in Africa awkwardly walking on their hind legs in the seasonal flood waters because they are bad swimmers while the elephants manage to look graceful doing the doggy paddle was particularly entertaining to me). In any case, if you missed the first three parts, I’m sorry but it’ll be out on DVD. Tune in Sunday night for the next two parts.

Okay, knitting news: I finally took some pictures of the finished slipper socks:

See what I mean about Chenille being bad for socks? There’s no stretch to them at all but at least they fit pretty well:

I made myself some fingerless gloves with the Alpaca I got. I used my Knitter’s Handy Book of Patterns and modified it for nice long cuffs and no fingertips. I held two strands of different colors together to make them nice and thick and it gave a nice color effect too. One was a natural/tan color and the other is a muted forest greenish color:

The first one I made was perfect. And the second one was a little bit bigger and baggier although it’s not all that noticeable. They fit well enough and they’re nice and warm to wear when I’m on the computer:

The right one is bigger. Around the time I finished these up, I realized that this was a trend: my knitting starting out one gauge and getting looser and looser and ending up a different gauge by the time I finish the project. This is what happened with the Yellowstone socks that I ripped out and started over. And then with my camo sweater, I got to the point where I bound off some stitches on either end of the body and set it aside to start on the sleeves that would be all joined together eventually. When I put the live stitches on holders to admire my work I realized it was gargantuan. I mean really, way, way bigger than it was supposed to be. I did some measurements and sure enough, what started out at 5 stitches an inch morphed into 4 stitches an inch. That’s the difference between a finished bust measurement of 40″ (will fit comfortably) and 48″ (will not necessarily be recognizable as a sweater on me).

Isn’t the waist shaping nice and subtle? And aren’t the colors gorgeous?

Well, I thought so. And I decided I really want this thing to be for me and I want it to fit me. So I frogged the whole freakin thing and started over with 160 stitches instead of 200. And now I’ve been obsessively checking to make sure I’m on track with my measurements and all seems to be going well.

Of course, the question is what the heck is going on with my gauge? I have two possible ideas and it could be either one or a combination of the two. One is that as I knit, I relax. When I hit mindless knitting mode, I get in a good rhythm and my fingers fly and I think things just end up looser. Another thing is that I changed the way I hold my yarn slightly. I hold my yarn in my left hand, using my index finger to hold the yarn up and taut and my pinkie to control the tension. In the past, I wrapped the yarn around my pinkie to give myself more control. Now that I’ve gotten used to the left handed style, I’ve stopped wrapping around my pinkie and just drape it over. The tension is a bit looser and I can knit faster. So I suspect that a combination of these factors is why my gauge has morphed in the midst of a project. The whole pinkie yarn wrap thing won’t be an issue because now I’m doing it the new way so it can’t cause any variation. And I guess the only other solution for the other is to knit nice big swatches and then check my gauge often as I go. In the future, hopefully these swatches will not be 15″ long and 48″ around!

In any case, I’m well on my way to getting back to where I was and I’m happy I decided to frog the whole thing. I’m doing a ribbed edging since the picot was rather tedious to actually do and doing a weird curly thing I didn’t like when it was done. So ribbing it is. And that’s the knitting news.