{"id":411,"date":"2010-07-06T20:05:22","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T03:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gknerd.com\/?p=411"},"modified":"2010-07-06T20:05:22","modified_gmt":"2010-07-07T03:05:22","slug":"the-knitting-shrink-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/?p=411","title":{"rendered":"The Knitting Shrink Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Knitting Black Hole is a well understood<\/span> recognized phenomenon wherein a knitter knits and knits and never seems to make any progress.\u00a0 Generally related to large swathes of stockinette, the Knitting Black Hole plagues many a knitter, often causing severe emotional distress and consternation.<\/p>\n

More rare, however, is the Knitting Shrink Hole.\u00a0 This phenomenon is categorized by a section of knitting that not only refuses to grow with more knitting, but goes so far as to shrink between measurements.\u00a0 Often, this shrinking behavior is in strict opposition to any swatches that may have been performed on the pattern before casting on for the actual project.<\/p>\n

The Wedding Blanket is a prime example of a Knitting Shrink Hole.\u00a0 When I swatched the center pattern, I ended up with something that told me that if I did 9 repeats, I would end up with 6 feet exactly.\u00a0 However, 9 repeats later, I’m not at 6 feet at all.\u00a0 I’m not even close to six feet.\u00a0 After 9 repeats (or 500+ rows, or several thousand stitches), where am I?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m at 5’2″.\u00a0 That’s 10 whole freakin’ inches short!\u00a0 That’s very nearly a foot short!\u00a0 Where did those inches go?<\/p>\n

It’s unclear.<\/p>\n

And don’t even get me started on width.\u00a0 When I started the center section, I was sure it was at least<\/em> 18 inches.\u00a0 I measured it constantly, and I was always very, very sure that it was a foot and a half wide.\u00a0 Dead certain.\u00a0 I would have staked money on it.<\/p>\n

Now that I’ve knit the entire panel?\u00a0 Not so much.\u00a0 Now it looks like it’s clocking in at 12 inches maybe<\/em>, and that’s if I stretch it out a bit.<\/p>\n

I’ve never experienced a Knitting Shrink Hole so extreme.\u00a0 Sure, an inch or two here or there, but 50% shrinkage?\u00a0 Without getting wet or felted?\u00a0 What’s going on?<\/p>\n

Luckily, I can still console myself with the fact that I haven’t yet blocked it.\u00a0 Blocking will fix everything, right?\u00a0 Right<\/em>?\u00a0 Hello?\u00a0 Why are you laughing?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m kind of upset that it looks so gorgeous, actually.\u00a0 If it were hideous, I’d contemplate starting over, but as it is I get lulled into a false sense of security looking at it and I feel like it’ll all come out okay in the end.\u00a0 I’m not sure how<\/em> it’ll all come out okay when I’m losing literally feet<\/em> of knitting, but somehow I’m convinced that it’ll work out.<\/p>\n

After all, maybe I was really knitting them a place mat.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Knitting Black Hole is a well understood recognized phenomenon wherein a knitter knits and knits and never seems to make any progress.\u00a0 Generally related to large swathes of stockinette, the Knitting Black Hole plagues many a knitter, often causing severe emotional distress and consternation. More rare, however, is the Knitting Shrink Hole.\u00a0 This phenomenon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[24,37],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-knitting-phenomenon","tag-wedding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gknerd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}