accidental mobius

I've always thought mobius strips were cool, but I was a little distressed to find that an inadvertent twist in the cast-on of my fair isle sweater resulted in a mobius-like twist in the knitting. I knew there was an answer, so it really didn't bother me that much (except for smacking myself in the forehead for having it happen in the first place), but the up side is that it led to some pretty cool mobius experiments with the friends who were here on Saturday.

Luckily, this was always planned to be a steeked cardigan, so I did a mini-steek to get it straightened out. I did a little machine sewing up each side of the cut line, undid the twist, and continued knitting in the round.

That's more like it!

This sweater has been a bumpy road. I almost tore it out last weekend because it was turning out H-U-G-E. It was only about an inch of rows at that point and I thought maybe it just didn't have enough structure yet. I decided to have faith in my gauge calculations, though, and knit a while longer, so when the mobius slip-up became apparent, I figured it was time to measure again to see if it was worth steeking to fix the twist or just call it a day and frog the whole thing. Luckily, the size was right on, so all I needed to do was fix the twist.

The neon yellow yarn at the bottom is a provisional cast-on because I think I'll probably want to add some more colorwork bands to lengthen the body, but I'll wait and see before I decide. The color is more accurate in the second pic, but I think that icky yellowish glare in the first pic is more reflective of my mood at the moment the shot was taken.

Jesse and I tried to go to a carving workshop in the morning, but something went kablooey because there was no one at the place where the meeting was supposed to be held. We were disappointed, but rebounded with a delightful afternoon yesterday at the New Britain Museum of American Art's open house and birthday celebration. Besides the scavenger hunt and very friendly hammered dulcimer player and running into friends and enjoying the wide variety of art on display there, we were particularly tickled by the above painting of the Minoan Palace of Knossos on Crete. One of the docents must have noticed our interest in it because he came over to start talking with us. When the kids said, "We were just THERE!," he started talking about a documentary he saw about the Minoans recently and we had a most enjoyable time chatting with him. The afternoon was rounded off with a pleasant walk across a large park to where our car was parked. There were some young 'hood guys huddled close together at a nearby pimped out car, fiddling with something in between them. Scott and I got a big laugh when these guys, all decked out in their gangsta duds, turned toward the field and started to launch their new kites into the wind. I said to Scott, "Boy, that's certainly not what I thought they were doing over there!" ;-) Yahoo for spring!