Things Were Made

I might be getting old. Less young.

I've made excellent progress on my cardigan (body and sleeves complete, cuffs complete) and am on the home stretch, eager to finish even though I'm not certain what I'll start on next. The thing is, all this knitting I've done? My elbow hurts and that's never happened before.

 Love the edging inside the front band (a wide ribbed band comes next) but sadly I had to undo it all as the row gauge didn't match the row gauge of the rest and that just won't do.

It annoys me to no end when I see a pattern for a garment which is a fresh look or otherwise worthy of notice, but all I can focus on is that the designer couldn't be bothered to shape the front neck, or finish the edges, or even block properly. Sloppy and arrogant in my opinion.

Beading also isn't so kind to the elbow unfortunately although truthfully nothing short of doing absolutely nothing will keep it immobile, which is probably what it needs.

I had this idea of making three-sided bicone beads but I guess I got impatient and settled on two-sided tabular beads, the first being the leftmost. It's a little flat and dull and for normal humans who don't stitch with neurotically tight tension, probably not very exciting. The second and third are structurally almost identical, but the blue and gold bead is constructed with a modicum of sense and order.

Actually the best thing about the construction is that you can make these any size you want as they're not made of two pieces zipped together as originally planned, so there's none of that pesky counting of rows and having to make two (or more) identical pieces.

Even with their central spines these are fairly flat beads and if the spines were limited to only one face, they'd like nicely around the neck or wrist.

They may need more attention, but they're not a bad start.