G. Knerd

(Monkey Kitty* is making typing very difficult right now by resting his head on the spacebar.  I’ll try to pull it off anyway, but it might be touch and go for a while…I blame any typos on him.)

I live with a very sneaky, wonderful man, who (since I’m not using real names here) we’re going to call the Blanket Thief.  One night a couple months ago, I was wondering what kind of socks I wanted to cast on for next and figured I’d give Arrgyles a try.

Swatching proved only that I wasn’t going to like the resulting socks, as they somehow were going to end up too big for me (somehow, because the pattern is 70 sts around and I normally like 75-85 sts for my socks – then again, I also tend to like complicated stitch patterns that eat up width…).  Realizing that the Blanket Thief has much bigger feet and ankles than me, I asked if he might want a pair of Arrgyles.

“Well, sure.  I’d love a pair of pirate socks.”  (I may have explained what Arrgyles were before we had this conversation – otherwise, his response would have been more like, “Uh, what?”)

“Even though you told me when we started dating that I should never knit you socks because you wouldn’t appreciate them?”  (I may or may not have a habit of setting the Blanket Thief up.)

He gave me an innocent look.  “Did I say that?”  I nod.  “Well, yeah, I guess I wouldn’t appreciate socks as much as I would, say, a sweater.  Actually, you know what would be really awesome?”  He got a gleam in his eye.  “Could you do that skull and crossbones thing on a sweater?”

“Of course!” I cried, thinking to myself “I can knit practically anything, and he wants to know if I can knit one stinking sweater with a skull and crossbones on it?!”

At least I had enough wherewithal to make sure he understood it was going to be his Christmas present…

So…all of that is just a setup for the cARGHdigan.  Here’s my progress so far:

The yarn is actually black, but the flash on my camera made it more of a gray/slate color.

I’m always surprised by how long the end of a skein lasts – when there was this much left, I was sure it wouldn’t last to the end of the row:

Then, when I finished that row and had this much left, I was sure I’d have to replace it before I got to the end:

But at the end of the row, when I had this much left, then I was sure it wouldn’t make it to the end of the row:

And dudes – I was totally right.  One skein, down.  Probably fifty-bazillion to go.

I can’t wait for the Arrgyle part to begin to relieve some of the monotony of the stockinette.  What was I thinking, agreeing to a whole sweater?

*We live with two cats: Monkey Kitty and Bear Kitty (not their real names, of course – I think blogs are more fun with nicknames).  I’ll do a post or two later to explain where Monkey Kitty and Bear Kitty got their names.