The learning continues

After he had accomplished over twenty rows of garter stitch, I taught my husband how to purl. He understood the concept very well - pushing the loop through the previous stitch front-to-back as opposed to pulling it through back-to-front. He did a couple, and then said, "And people find this difficult?" When I answered yes, he declared that he didn't understand how that could be. Which indicates to me that he is well on his way to being a fearless knitter.

More evidence for this occurred after he tried, on a whim, by himself, an increase. Just for the heck of it. I had talked to him briefly about increases and how to do them, but he wanted to try it on his own. He used the 'make two from the next stitch' approach, and one row later, slunk over to me to ask for my help because he'd hit a problem. Turns out he had purled into the front of the stitch, then purled into the front of the stitch again. Unsurprisingly, he found when he hit that part of the next row, he had one huge stitch instead of two individual ones. I set him straight and told him that the technique requires working into the back of a stitch the second time to create the increase. He got it right away and kept going, adding a stitch here and there whenever he felt like it.

He then began to wonder why the work was taking on a strange shape. I explained to him that since he was always adding new stitches in the middle of the row, he was creating a gusset in the middle of the work. If he wanted the edges of the work to start angling out, he would have to increase at the sides. Since he sews, he understood precisely what I was talking about.

He's really doing quite well indeed. He still has tension issues, but that is entirely expected, and he does seem to be improving as he goes.

The neatest part was when I sat down for a snack at the kitchen table Saturday night, and he had to move the yarn ball aside to give me room.

"Oh here, let me just move my knitting for you," he said.

Then he looked at me with a delighted smile.

"Hear that? My knitting, I said."

I'm very proud.

Snowdrop cloth for DH's aunt

Many more decreasing rows have been made. I'm very enthusiastic about the stage I'm in now. As my husband said, with a happy gasp, "You're going downhill!!!" That's exactly right. Downhill, smooth sailing, and lookin' fine. I'm now down to just five broken-out snowdrops in the centre panel. I wanted to take a picture of it all for the blog today, but DD had a nightmare of a morning and there was no time.

Vigdis tunic for moi

I had a few minutes to kill this weekend, so I fixed the miscrossed cable and kept going...only to find that I'd omitted doing a cable move in the main pattern two rows back. I only got one of them fixed before I ran out of time.

Elizabeth of York vest for moi

No progress, but I do have some pictures:

The completed back

One of the front panels, in progress