This week as well as knitting secret items (see Wednesday's post) I have also been making less secret bootees for my new nephew James. Some of you may remember I knitted some for him when he was first born, but now he is rather bigger so I thought I would make him some more. It was going to be so simple I was just going to redo the first pair but in a bigger size. However, on Sunday when I went to cast on I discovered that the needles I needed were being used! I don't yet have a stitch minder or multiples in needles so I had a rethink. I was looking through some magazines and other patterns I have collected and I came across one my mum gave me ages ago. This pattern was for pretty cute bootees, with a turn down top and a shaped heel and pretty fancy looking. So I thought I would give them a bash. It was not successful. Not successful at all!
It was all going fine until the pattern said turn, I remained calm went onto the internet googled it and found out what to do! No problem! Then the pattern said pick up and knit, I was starting to loose my cool at this point but again went onto the internet (thank God for the internet) and looked it up. Ok it seemed straight forward enough, I gave it a go. I quickly realised I was not doing it right. So I decided to unpick the last 9 stitches (the wrong ones) and try again. Yeah that didn't go any better, to cut a long story short after the fifth time I was in tears and my knitting looked like the above picture! In my frustrated state I called my mum. She was as usual very understanding and said you know maybe I was just trying too much too soon (again!) she also reminded me that not everyone gets it right first time and she still makes mistakes as she is sure every knitter, new or old does. I apparerntly was not in the mood for a pick me up and decided that knitting and I were over and it was all my mum's fault anyway for giving me the pattern! I am very lucky my mum pays no attention to me when I am like this (I really really don't like being defeated by something) and said she would call me back later.
By the time she did my lovely husband had given me chocolate and all seemed better again. I decided to go to the shop the following day buy another pair of needles (can you have too many?) and do the bootees I know how to knit and when I visit my mum next week she can help me with the other ones!
So here finally (sorry for the saga) are the bootees I made this week for James!
The second purple one is just waiting to be cast off, which I'll do later today!
For more hopefully less traumatic FO Fridays visit Tami's blog here
