Monday, April 1, 2013

Pictures in My Head

Are you a "chart person"? It seems to me that a lot of knitters fall into one of two camps when it comes to pattern reading--they like charts OR they like words. I guess I'm mostly a chart person. I find it easiest to understand what's going on when I can see a chart or drawing of what's supposed to happen. I might even be happy with Japanese-style patterns, which are almost entirely in chart form. Words can get in the way; they can more easily be wrong; they can bog you down in way more detail than is necessary to let you know what needs to be done.
Today, I've been working on some double-knitted pockets. These are pockets that are knitted in as you go, so that the whole thing is accomplished without breaking the yarn. No ends to weave in. No loose joins where the lining begins and the body ends. Very neat and tidy. Not so easy to wrap my head around the pathway that the work takes with two pockets being worked on either side of a piece of knitting on a circular needle. In fact, I started this piece yesterday evening while in the midst of a Lord of the Rings movie fest. Big mistake. Somewhere, in one of the battle scenes, I lost my sense of where I was in the tangle of rows. So, this morning I made a chart to keep myself on track. See?


Now I'm launched in...


 nice soft, chunky yarn in "celadon" (although the photo makes it look more blue than green).