There's nothing magic about Judy.

This my friends, is a picture of success.

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This is my first successful attempt at using Judy's Not-So-Magical Cast on. I picked up a copy of Socks from the Top Up today at Barnes and Noble (I had a gift card to use up). I had every intention of buying New England Knits but I talked myself out of it because realistically, it's going to be months before I work up the gumption to knit up that gorgeous sweater on the cover. But socks? I can do socks now and they would make great airplane knitting. And toe up would be a nice new challenge. I liked the look of most of the socks in the book so I went with it instead.  Well after spending most of the day working on Manda's Something Lacy I wanted something new (I'm still working on the lace back and after 4.5 repeats I'm a little bored with it) so I decided to try one of the toe up socks from the book. I wound up 2 balls of Lorna's Laces in Clara's Garden and picked out a pattern.

That was the easy part. The pattern calls for casting on either with the Turkish Cast On, Figure Eight or Judy's Magic cast on. None of them looked appealing to me but I decided to try Judy's Magic Cast On since it seemed to be the easiest and most useful to know. I do long tail cast on all of the time, this should be a piece of cake! Right?

Wrong. 1 hour and 3 you tube videos later (including one very annoying Cat Bordhi clip) and I was incredibly annoyed and baffled. No matter how many times I replayed the videos and went through it step by step all I wound up with was a series of unknittable yos on both needles. I never have this much trouble trying to learn knitting trick with videos to follow but for some reason this cast on baffled me.

I finally stumbled upon this blog post with a slightly different version of the cast on  and after 2 tries it finally clicked! Turning it upside down and following her clearly written out instructions made all of the difference in the world. I highly recommend this technique if you have any trouble learning Judy's Magic Cast On. I still don't quite understand what was going wrong before but as long as I can memorize this method I could be fine for knitting socks toe up.

On another note, Lorna's Laces is so incredibly soft. I cannot wait to put these socks on my feet.

Noro spiral one-skein hat

I've got 3 balls of Noro Silk Garden Chunky. I have no idea what to do with 3 balls of Noro Silk Garden Chunky. It's not a lot of yarn to be sure. I decided to try making this hat (ravelry link). So far it's given me nothing but fits. The pattern isn't hard. I know it isn't. Logically this should be a piece of cake. So why isn't it?

I'm impatient. I hate ripping things out and starting over. Had to rip out my first go around because my holes were stacking on top of one another instead of in a spiral. On my second attempt currently. I did my ribbing and then jumped straight into the eyelet pattern instead of knitting a row first. Doesn't seem like a big deal so I keep going. Did an eyelet row, and then promptly did another one, forgetting to knit the second row. GDI! Do I keep going? Rip it back again? I decide to keep going and see what happens...what happens is now I have two holes next to one another but by my 3rd eyelet round I see my spiral finally taking shape. Now I'm wondering if I can get away with that first (ok, second) mistake and keep going at this point. I hate frogging stuff. Patience is not my greatest virtue at all. (god, how am I EVER going to handle knitting lace?!)

Another observation I've had: I fucking hate knitting hats on my denise interchangeables! Too much needle, not enough cord on the 16 inch so it's a fight to do every single stitch in a hat. Maybe I'm using the wrong cord? I'll come back to this issue later...I totally think maybe I'm doing this wrong.

And another thing...my hat isn't making pretty spirals of color like all of the others. Right now it looks like cat vomit. Nobody wants to wear cat vomit on their head, no matter how brightly colored it is.

I'm about ready to scrap the hat and make something else...but what else can you do with 3 balls of Noro? Three very small balls!