I am a bit of an obsessive-compulsive nerd. Why do you ask?? Click on those to get a better close-up idea of the nerdiness.
I’m at the point in the knitting of the True Blood Albatross Faery Ring sweater where I get to stop knitting mindless stockinette and start the cable charts for the bodice. There are four different cable charts, so I got out graph paper and pencil this morning and came up with this to help keep track of which cable goes where. Here’s the knitting so far.
The color’s really all wrong there. It’s not that pink, it’s more of a bloody red. I have two more rows of stockinette stitch, then I can set up the cables and go to town. This should be a lot more fun and less of an Albatross at this point.
I have one last photo from the Great Knitting Doctor Family Reunion & Train Trip of 2010. I mentioned that we found a yarn shop in Fergus Falls, MN. It was actually surprisingly well-stocked for a shop in a town that size.
I’m off to find the cable needle and my little box of stitch markers!
You can call that nerdiness if you like. I consider it something more along the lines of “a stitch in time saves nine.” Doing that work up front may well have saved you hours of frogging and tinking and cursing when you (inevitably, if you are anything like me) screwed up one of the cables. It may even have saved the sweater itself; enough cursing and frogging and that sweater might have ended up on the back of the closet, never to be seen again.
Good work.
I, for one, applaud a little obsessive compulsiveness in doctors. It’s nice to have a physician who just can’t be too careful!! Of course, you realize you throw a chocolate martini into the mix and all bets are off! Can I put in my order now? I’m bringing simple knitting.
Brava! Anything to keep it all straight! I bow to your nerdiness.
I’m with all three of you! I also want a doctor that is obsessive/compulsive and is a nerd! As for the chocolate martini, I’ll be right there to help! I’ll bring mindless lace knitting…..
Wow. Suddenly I have no desire to knit that sweater. It’s WAY too complicated for me!
I’m amused that you’ve been to that MN knitting store and I haven’t. 🙂
Wouldn’t go anywhere near charts like that.
Course, wouldn’t have made it through med school, either.
I’m with kmkat – looks like a great idea to me.
I am a firm believer that nerds are more fun. The trick is to be happy in your nerdiness, so you don’t care what others think (you know, nerdy like me!). 🙂
Yeah! I’m so glad to see it coming back to life. I made a spreadsheet for all the cables. I separated the different repeat cables by matching st markers. When things calm down again, I’m going to pick it up again, finish the little bit left on the shoulders and start the sleeves. Maybe we’ll both be wearing our sweaters before winter solstice???
I do exactly the same thing, and I find that it really helps. When you assemble the pieces, you can see exactly how the cables will fall. I’m not sure how I managed in the days before there were pattern charts, copiers, and Knit Visualizer. That is a beautiful sweater, and all this prep work pays off. I find that I make far fewer errors than I would without sketching out the entire sweater (I did this for my Norwegian sweater too).
I actually knit my first Aran sweater back in the days when there were only written instructions. I’m not sure I could do that any more.
well, I think it’s pretty darn creative and if it gets you thru it…go for it!
is that that same blood red you were spinning?
it’s SO pretty! soso pretty!
I am pretty new to cables. I did make a sweater and love it but it was a lot for me!
can’t wait to see it all done!
Fergus is the big city! My folks are from one of the REALLY small towns in that area…my grandparents would always talk about all the great things you could do and get in Fergus. Hilarious!
Every town in Minnesota should have a yarn store, after all it gets rather cold there. 🙂