Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Pinball Progress!

The first set of strawberries is done! I'm not sure how much they resemble the originals, but their cuteness makes that just fine. It's also very strange looking at it with bright colors instead of the faded colors of the originals--something often true, I find. Reproductions always look so new, don't they?

Strawberry Pinball 1

I'm quite pleased with how it's coming out. I think I pulled the floating threads in back a little too tight behind the strawberries though. This won't affect things once it's done, but something I want to be aware of for the next set. Also, three colors? I'm so glad it's only four rows per strawberry! It's exceedingly awkward, what with the super fine threads and all!

I have had some problems with the chart (this is what happens when a spatially challenged person who can barely hand write anymore and has deficient counting skills tries to make a chart). On the left side strawberry (which really looks more flowery now!), I left off a few stitches. Easy to fix, mentally even.

I did notice that it'll be very easy to make the middle strawberries the same height as the others. Just don't do that extra row! It's just a row of stem, so quite easy to skip.

Today though, near tragedy struck. Yes, I'm being dramatic, but they're my 000000 needles, so I'm entitled to!

Anyway, I noticed the spacing on the central strawberries was off. One stem started 5 stitches from the previous berry, then the next was six. Visually, not significant, but it bothered me all the same since I thought I had made it even. Then I noticed that the tip of one leaf overlapped the center of the strawberry below, but the other didn't do that. Very odd. Though I doubt it'd be visible in the end, that overlap really seemed to affect the balance of the whole thing.

Then I noticed the central strawberry's right leaf. I added an extra stitch, so one side was one stitch wider than the other. See? Spatially challenged! This made the it so the strawberry on the right was properly aligned and didn't overlap and the one on the left overlapped.

However, finding the mistake made it easy to fix. I marked out the extra stitches on the central strawberry, added them where they should be, made a little note to move the left hand strawberry one stitch over, and now there are two stitches between the central strawberries instead of one. All I have to do is when I'm knitting just concentrate on the ins and outs of each strawberry, which is how I knit these anyway. You only need one strawberry to knit the whole thing. Well, unless you need them laid out to see where to start the next one!

This wasn't the tragedy though. That was five minutes of figuring the same sort of thing I'm always figuring out. I had a little extra time at lunch today, so I was working on this then. After work, I decided to knit the next row just to make sure it was fine. And it was.

Except for the dropped stitch. The entirely unnecessary dropped stitch. You see, when figuring it out, I unknit a half a row. And I thought I had an extra stitch, you know, a piece of the previously knit row or something double wound, so I dropped it. Only, it was a real stitch.

Thankfully, I am good at picking stitches up. It only went down two or three rows. The only tricky part--and I didn't notice this until after the first time I fixed it--was the first stitch was pink, then the next brown. Not too difficult, and I think I got it looking about 95% right. Enough to not be noticeable!

There is a very slight hole though. This, however, just makes it so I will definitely line this in linen. My previous pinballs are unlined, but the inspiration for this one is. I wasn't sure about lining it, I mean, it's so easy not to, but now I think I will. Just a little added protection. I'll just use a very nice, lightweight linen.

And I think that's all for this novel of a post!

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