March Madness

Although I'm right in the middle of the test knit and final review of my first pattern, my knitting and Internet time has been seriously affected by a very important event: March Madness. As a University of Kentucky fan I'm always crazy about basketball, but this year's tournament has been more intense. It's my first year out of school in which UK has been in the tournament (I still pretend that last year didn't happen), and I've actually entered a bracket into a pool with real money (instead of the homework coupons we used in elementary school), and I have to keep up on my basketball news so that I can defend my team against some of my coworkers.

In the small amount of knitting time I have found, I finished the pair of socks using the Stroll Sock Yarn that I received from the Knit Picks IDP. I'm really worried about how the pictures will turn out because the Sapphire Heather is such a deep blue. I've also come across quite a few issues during the test knit, which brings me to a (not so shocking) conclusion: designing is hard. I know that a lot of the issues are just beginner mistakes that I'll know to look out for next time, but I have swatched like crazy trying to figure out some of the issues brought up by my test knitters. Luckily, they are all sweet and wonderful and active and I haven't had anyone flake at all. 

My first pair of Archers was made using a slip 1, k2tog, psso centered double decrease on the arrowhead, which I really liked. When I was typing up the pattern, though, I used the double decrease on Knit Picks' standard list of abbreviations. I'm not really feeling the sharp line down the center of the arrowhead, so unfortunately I think I'll be ripping back to the end of the arrow shafts and fixing them. I'm aiming to rope my friend into modeling for pictures this weekend, so it looks like I'll be speed knitting some socks.