Take heed!

What's not good.... (or, warnings for things that seem like a good idea, but are probably best left as ideas)


1. Well, for starters, adding a teaspoon of Roasted almond and Flax butter to your oatmeal SEEMS like a good and tasty idea, but in reality, is, while flavorful, a completely disgusting texture and almost impossible for the average person to choke down. Perhaps if I had added it in after the oatmeal cooked, but in the interest of being efficient, I plopped it in with the dried oats and bing cherries and then poured boiling water all over it, stirred and slammed the lid on. When I opened the container this morning, there was a weird pale waxy coating on the top and it didn't get better when I mixed it in. Also, when you wonder why no one else on the planet has ever come up with the flavor explosion of steel cut oats, dried bing cherries and almond butter, perhaps instead of considering yourself a pioneer, you might take a step back and consider that you're weird and it's disgusting and then stick with your old standby of prunes and cinnamon... just saying!


2. Committing yourself to knitting one thing and one thing only in an effort to get WIPS off the needles is an excellent IDEA... that's what it is... an idea. The actual doing of it is so not a good idea... I mean, if it was even acheivable. Now, to be fair to me, I've lasted for about a month of knitting on one thing exclusively in the effort to get it done and move on to the next thing. I did Terra exclusively until it was done (I bought two skeins of Fleece Artist Woolie Silk 3 ply to keep me motivated to finish) and it was such a great feeling that I knit (also out of necessity) on the baby blanket exclusively until IT was done... (I bought a skein of Fleece Artist Trail Socks in RedFox and two thimbles of metallic orange thread to keep me motivated to finish). Then I moved to my Guernsey Wrap and for the last week have been knitting a requisite amount every day (or more) to get it done by March 26th (I bought a skein of Schopell-Wolle Zauberball Strake 6 and two thimbles of purple metallic thread for pompoms on my at work project to keep me motivated). Do you see what's happening? Just because I'm not casting on new projects, doesn't mean I'm not buying yarn for new projects! In fact, in the time that I've decided to be a monogomous knitter, which is about a month, I've bought more yarn (and metallic thread) than I've purchased yet all year! {In my defense, I also put back three skeins of yarn I had on hold in an attempt to maintain some sort of yarn buying sanity}. Again, in my defense, my Guernsy wrap is moving along most excellently and I'm two days ahead of my goal! To reward myself, I did cast on something new to keep me motivated to keep knitting...


3. Long tail friggen cast on! I mean, I love it and apparently it's (better be!) stretchy enough for ribbing, but it's not my favorite one to do! I thought I was being smart last night tho, since i had to cast on 345 stitches, that I would work from both sides of the ball in order to not have to guesstimate and waste-imate my finite amount of yarn... also, what kind of a rage would I be in if I estimated enough for 344 stitches and had to recast on all those stitches! However, this 'plan', which was not my invention, was the most frustrating thing EVER! You tie a slipknot (or regular knot) to affix the two ends together. Then, you hold the yarn in your regular long tail cast on method, but hold the knot against the needle (so that it ends up on the end of the cast on). I cast on two extra stitches than needed so I can take the first two garbage stitches by the knot out later on. The problem is that for some reason, the 'bottom yarn' (the one that creates the braid along the bottom of the needle, not the one that makes the stitch on the needle), which comes off your thumb gets so twisted and messed up that it makes kinks and knots... By the time I had gotten to the end of the 345 (which I got on the first count) it was a massive knotted mess and the two plys had come unplied. When I clipped the bottom yarn (you clip that bottom piece and weave it in later and keep knitting with the top piece (that comes off your index finger and makes the stitch on the needle), all that twist (in the wrong direction) came flying out and the yarn looked good as new... I just don't understand WHY it gets all untwisted like that and what you can do to prevent it. It makes doing the cast on much more unpleasant than it needs to be, and really, casting on 345 stitches is already pretty unpleasant!