Getting the Hang of it

I would be wondering "Why Naomi is having such a hard time grafting her invisible cast-on piece to the main piece?".

I have looked at books, I have watched Lucy Neatby's Finesse Your Knitting DVD (thank you Michale for loaning it to me). This video is very good by the way. I would buy it myself but now that I am on a "fixed income" I know where I can borrow it! :)

My problem isn't doing normal grafting. I can do normal grafting. My problem is half of my material is as you would see in videos and books and the other half(which was knit from a provisional, crochet cast-on) is not. Since the stitches from the provisional are a 1/2 stitch off, this makes it challenging(at least for me).

The photo below shows the little piece I am trying to graft on which began with an invisible cast-on. The white yarn is some smooth waste yarn that shows me now the yarn should be sewn to join the pieces together. This is what I would call the piece that is shown in "normal" grafting examples.



The photo below really shows what I mean by the knitting being a 1/2 stitch off. In Lucy's DVD she has you put smooth waste yarn on each piece you will be graphting together. I can not do this with the piece that is 1/2 stitch off - this is the whole reason for the need to graft these pieces together. If it were as easy as just picking up from the waste yarn, this would eliminate the need for this grafting.



I'm getting the hang of this. I have seen some *issues* with my latest piece of grafting and I may have to rip out and start again. I think this is because I tried doing it late at night. The photo below is the piece I did during the day and I am quite pleased with the results. As long as it took me to do this(lots of sewing, then re-sewing - trying to read the stitches correctly) I was thinking I could have re-knit the whole sleeve. I guess that would go against what I am trying to learn here...plus I am NOT going to re-knit the whole front and back just because of this darn situation. Looks pretty good..or as good as I am going to get since this is really making me very behind in other homework. It took me probably 4-5 hours for just one sleeve. Honestly. I think I will get quicker the more I can really memorize what I should be doing.



I must say that having this time is priceless. Spending all this time practicing, doing and re-doing this graft has been an enjoyable learning experience rather than a frustrating, race against time *chore*. Just by being able to take my time with it is just amazing. I'm enjoying this learning process rather than being frustrated by it.

I am also getting the hang of this NOT WORKING gig. It is so nice! I'm tending to stay up later. I was waking up about 5:30 everyday but today I made it till 7am! (I make it sound like I have been doing it awhile - today is day 3 of freedom!)

It almost seems like a dream not having the performance pressures from work. It is so nice to wake up and look at what my day might be. Go downstairs, wake and feed the boys, have my coffee(G is still making my latte's) and just sit for a bit to figure out what I will do with my day. Pure luxury.