The second devil sock is about a third done. I can’t always knit too long on a sock project as between mucho typing and teeny needles, I get sore hands. So I started a couple of thick needle projects. A nice snuggly shawl for me and a conversion of shawl project to cowl project for friend’s well overdue birthday present (yarn didn’t want to play nice with the lace). All this signals the usual May/June onset of knitting urge frenzy. I spun far more than knitted between October and April (as overdue present and devil socks will attest to) but, just like last year, as the weather gets chillier, my need to KNIT ALL THE THINGS suddenly gets out of control.

Which is not good when I’m on deadline and also because I have to limit my needle time to keep shoulder and hands happy. Still, progress is being made. I even had a small victory today in frogging. Now, I was taught the basics by my Mum when I was a small thing. The basics being casting on in one way, knit, purl, probably some sort of increasing and possibly k2tog decreases. That’s about it. Back then, if I dropped a stitch or something, Mum fixed it for me.

Since taking knitting up again, I’ve been expanding my repertoire and learning from books and YouTube (all hail YouTube) and websites. I’ve picked up a lot of stuff, I can knit socks and lace and things but still sometimes feel like I don’t know what I’m doing with basics like picking up stitches for heel flaps (I avoid this mostly as I prefer toe up) and yes, while I can pick up a dropped stitch, if I notice a mistake too far back, I’ve tended towards the “must rip out many rows to get to error and cry if you don’t have a life line” school of repairs. I am not a gun knitter when it comes to such things (or anything really). Trust me, my sil is a gun knitter, my Mum is pretty good and my grandmothers both knit like the wind. Me, I muddle through.

But today I was knitting away on the cowl on the train (which I don’t often do as most of my projects require too much referring to patterns) and noticed I had purled two stitches that should have been knit about three rows down, two thirds of the way along a row. At first I thought “Frak” followed by “no, lifeline, noooooooooo”.Then I thought “pull yourself together, self, it’s just two stitched, just drop them down and fix them”. Which I proceeded to do. On the train, no crochet hook, just needles. Dropped ’em down, figured out which way made a knit stitch and fixed them. Go me!

Not a big achievement but a small step to understanding this whole sticks and strings thing a bit better. Now I just need to con said sil into showing me some of the other stuff and I’ll be set.