What to do, what to do

I would make a mighty poor wildlife photographer, I tell you. I find it hard enough to photograph the cats, who sleep approximately 25 hours out of the 24, making them fairly stationary photographic targets most of the time, and now I'm having trouble getting the knitting to sit still. But honestly, on the circular needles, it keeps flapping away from me. I need two hands to hold it down and another hand to work the camera, and not being Zaphod Beeblebrox, it's a challenge.

But I persevere, though I'm not sure the final product gets my point across. You tell me.

My idea was to make a small, lap-size blanket using this stitch pattern, repeated.


This is in The Knitting Directory, which I bought recently (bargain book). The stitch's skill rating is "basic" but I've still managed to mess it up, isn't that special? I've partly got it, but, well, let's see if I can show you.

You can see in the photo above that it's supposed to have the diamond shapes. When I was starting, I thought I could see that my diamonds had a problem, but it was hard to see the pattern so early, and I decided to keep going until it was more clear. Unfortunately, when it was clear, it was wrong, with a sort of bar of purl where it should have been knit, or vice versa, intruding into the side of the diamond.


The next repeat, though, the diamonds looked right! Joy, happy dance!


I decided that maybe I didn't have it wrong after all, I'd just done something wrong at the beginning. But after that, they went wrong again. I can see the row on the needles is going to have the same problem. To the right of the stitch marker, bumps where it should be smooth, damn it.


I don't think I want to keep going and end up with a blanket where half the diamonds are right and half of them have this bar sticking into them. That will bug me. So that rules out option one of the three (live with it, fix it, or frog it). However, I don't know how to figure out where it's going wrong. It's math, people! I was an English major! It's amazing I've knit this long without colliding with math much, but here we are. And if I can't figure out how to fix it, option two becomes non-self-selecting, so it's off to the frog pond.

I'm not rushing into it. I'm going to put it aside, into the contemplative area that should surround every frog pond, and work on something else. And if I do end up frogging, it may be all for the best. I have not been sure I bought enough for a decent-sized blanket, even for a lap blanket, so perhaps this yarn wants to be something else, and that's why it's giving me this problem.

Don't I sound all philosophical? I wonder what it might want to be? And what else can I use this stitch pattern on, in a way that will work? Because I do think it's pretty, if I could just get it to work. One repeat, surrounded by stockinette, perhaps.

In other news, I did put the cat privacy room in the bathroom today, where it looks much better than the big honkin' litter box did. As long as the cats are willing to use it ... we'll see. It always takes them a day or two to adjust to change, of course. The first step is me being happy, but if they don't use it, it will Have To Go, so paws crossed on that.

I learned something else about them today. They take after my father: they're Giants fans. See Harold?


Well, now you see him, right?


I didn't see the take-over, so I don't know if it was peaceful or hostile.


See, Dad? We all love your sweatshirt. Thanks for letting us "borrow" it for the long, cold northern winters. (And sometimes in the air-conditioning, too.)