My top down sweater is completed! Unfortunately, Monkey King needs to learn how to use our new camera, because all the pictures so far look like this:

 

Hot. Sex.

See what I mean? My come and hither was completely wasted.

Next up: Hat. I can do hats.  

I would like to point out that I, Kim, took this awesome marginally better picture.  

What we have here are two sleeves and half a back that will need to be ripped out due to an obvious and very disfiguring mistake on my part. Ugh. Sorry for the crappy picture quality, it is very overcast in Virginia today. Also overcast? MY SOUL.

I am making the Ribbed Turtleneck from Hollywood Knits by Suss Cousins (it's the cover design). The entire sweater is done in K1 P1 rib in even numbers. This means you start with a knit stitch and end in a purl (relevant later).

Now, clever me, I thought, "I will do my increases and decreases 1-2 stitches away from the edge stitch, to allow myself a selvedge for seaming." Yes, I am so smart NOT. What I didn't think of was the fact that when you do seam, you eat up 1/2 of a stitch. Seaming a K stitch to a K stitch looks pretty. Seaming a K stitch to a P stitch? Nooooooot so much. And I got this far before "that feeling" (you know the one) prompted me to reach for "Sweater Design in Plain English" and open up to the ribbing section where my worst fears were confirmed..

OMG, DUH. On the bright side, I've been knitting on size 11 needles with chunky yarn, so it shouldn't take too long to get back on track.

And now for my mini-rant about the written directions for this pattern. They suck. The schematic is horrible too. A lot of looking at the pictures and guesswork are needed to figure out how to carry on. The best I can say is that I feel like I'm all smart now because I could look at the pattern and go, "WTF. Okaaaaaaay, I guess I'll do a tubular cast on so it'll look like the picture and *peers at directions some more* ktog and ssk for the decreases that I am apparently supposed to do on the first and last stitches but will not. Thanks for nothing, SUSS." And now the more experienced knitters are laughing at me, but hey. This is progress for the Yarn Abuser.

Bleh.

This past weekend Monkey King and I went to New York City for a short trip to visit his parents, who were visiting from Florida, and some of his extended family. Everything went very well, we got to see his sister again (always fun) and hang out with my good, blogless friend Meena. But this entry isn't about the good times. It's about the embarrassing times.

Picture us, the family plus me, all sitting around the table having dim sum. Me, MK's mother, his little cousin (maybe 4 years old?), his aunt, another cousin, his grandmother, cousin, sister, father, and Monkey King. We're all having fun, and they have just given me very generous gifts. I'm playing with the littlest cousin, "Got Your Nose!" You all remember this game, right?

Well, apparently, when you make this gesture (aka "you have gotten that nose"):

it's the same as this gesture (this is a cat giving you the middle finger):

So I basically flipped off a four year old girl. Laughingly and gratuitously in front of Monkey King's relatives. Luckily, my boyfriend was there to point it out to everyone who may have missed it, including his grandmother. She was able to confirm that yes, that IS how Chinese people flip each other off.

Hey, they didn't call me Smooth Kim in middle school just because I shaved off my eyebrows.

I can magic loop! I learned it all by myself (with a little help from the internets)! Man I feel smart.

This picture also represents my move to sleeve island. The sweater I am currently working on is Zimmerman based, and thus worked in the round. So I am working sleeves in the round and will attach them to the main tube of the sweater when they're done. Excitement!

All that stuff under the knitting is Kim Math (tm). Do not attempt to understand. No one understands. Like those black blobs? Those are numbers. The things that look like Earth numbers? Those are black blobs. It is all written on graph paper because Kim Math (tm) must be caged within blue boxes. That is the only way to bind Kim Math (tm) to this dimension.

Kim Math (tm) once made a calculator explode all over a teacher's assistant, blinding him. That teacher's assistant later gained the gift of prophecy. He lived to be 116. No lie.

Guess what I can do! Guess! Guess!

I can knit stockinette without purling. I know! You are all saying, "What? This bitch crazy." Well, it's true on both counts.

You see, I knew there was a way to do it, I just hadn't applied myself to finding out. Once I learned to knit continental, the urge to figure this non-purling business out became stronger.

Cue Vogue Knitting. Right there, smack in the first "how to make a knit stitch" lesson, is a diagram showing you how to knit left handed! Brilliant! My way isn't exactly the same as I have to hold my yarn in my right hand, but by god, I can knit stockinette without purling. I kind of look like a typwriter. Knit from left needle onto right, knit from right needle onto left. GOD I'M SMART.

If anyone is interested in a photo heavy tutorial on just how I got my ever more functional left hand to do the knitting, drop me a comment and I'll post up my skillz for the world to share.

Next thing to learn: reverse stockinette and ribbing in the same left handed manner.

**If this whole thing is old news to you, please pretend you are just finding out for the first time. It's my first day of absolutely no nicotine whatsover. I'm fragile.

PS

I also did my first tubular cast on and bobbles this weekend. This year of the dog must be code for year of the brainiac.