Sloggity Slog Slog

I'm working on Yggdrasil again. (again.) My desire to churn away at it ebbs and flows, but is usually directly related to my propensity to make stupid mistakes and not notice these for 8 rows. This, of course, induces gnashing of teeth and open weeping. The blanket is set aside for a few days, and then I pick it back up again, rip back to my oh so unbelievably stupid mistake(s), and slog away again. (again.)

But progress! I ran out and bought another skein of Fisherman's wool (bringing the total up to 5) in a different, but veeeeery similar dye lot and used that to pick up the stockinette section. If you recall, a few posts back I said that I needed to be careful when I picked up, since the arbitrary directions called for a number which was "about 4 of every 5 stitches." I hate directions written this way because the only thing you can be sure of is that 4 of every 5 is incorrect. Will it result in too many or too few? You can't know. You can just start and hope for the best, fail miserably, cram 20 stitches into a space you used for 6 eight inches ago, realize that rather than making headway you are making a mess, and you are left to flounder helplessly.

Except I had an idea (a good idea, for the record). It is very difficult to visually determine the location of more than 100 future stitches over roughly 4 feet in advance. It is much easier to see, say, 30 over a 10 inch section, or better yet 10 over a roughly 3 inch section. A plan!

Subdivide and conquer!

Look at the tiny teal tassels!

The secret is fourths. Fold the blanket in half, and then in half again. Reach back in the depths of your mind to that childhood latch-hooking project and hook yourself 3 little tassels. I have pretty good spacial reasoning (it compensates for my complete inability to spell), so I left it like that and divided each subdivision again into thirds visually.

I picked up more than 400 stitches, evenly, correctly, beautifully, on my first try. (This is me patting myself on the back for not royally screwing this up. I was seriously terrified that the project would languish in my "WIP"  box until the end of time because I couldn't move past the 1st border)

We have long since moved on. I told myself that I needed to finish the blanket before I started anymore on Wakame. And by told myself, I mean my all of my interchangeable cables are currently attached to the world tree and so I can't actually use them.  I'm through 2 and a quarter sides. At first I was quite excited (something new!), but then I realized I'm knitting the equivalent a 30 foot scarf.

I declare the dye lots "close enough"

As long as I keep slogging at a respectable pace, we'll make it through. 5 hour car rides certainly help. Hopefully more interesting projects are on the horizon.