Woman on fire!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! Woman on fire!

Well, not EXACTLY on fire, but certainly getting caught up in a hurry!

Below are the Suzanne Atkinson and Ginger Smith squares, bringing me totally up to date with my knit-along group on Knit 'n Chat.

The Atkinson Square (page 28) was a lot of fun to knit and watch the church and tree take shape. I must admit that once the decreases for the church roof started, at no time did I have the proper number of stitches between the tree and the church. Everything worked out all right in the end -- as in the church and the tree did not collide, and no one will be the wiser except me. And everyone who reads the blog. It really was a well-charted square, and I enjoyed it.

The Ginger Smith square (page 40) was another square which I wasn't that keen to make. I had quickly read through the directions and was totally put off by the idea of knitting the thing in sections. Why would you do that, when the cables and such all ran the same direction? Since I don't have a love-thing with seaming, it just seemed to be a bit much. In fact, I had decided that I WOULD knit it in one piece when the time came.

The time came, and I read the directions more carefully. As in actually READING and not skimming at a preposterously high rate of speed. You see, there is a reason for knitting the square in sections. There is a little raised knit stitch between each of the cable patterns -- a raised stitch made by slipping a stitch every other row and then knitting the slipped stitch along with a picked-up stitch.

The light came on, the room grew bright and I understood. And knit the square in sections.

The added bonus of knitting this square in sections like this is that you only have to read one chart at a time. This sure makes finding where you are easy, and enjoyable.

I now have 16 squares knit, of the 25 I need for my afghan. The pattern only provides 24 squares, so I was trying to decide which square to duplicate. Then a friend had a brilliant idea. Why not make a square with my initials and a date? Like I said ... brilliant.

What's really interesting to me is that ... even as much as I dislike seaming my projects together ... I'm actually looking forward to sewing this baby together! Who would've suspected, eh?