boring knitting talk ahead
Those of you wondering why I never write porno any more, ignore this and stay tuned, I am going to write something this weekend or kill myself in the process, and as soon as I get two spoons in the same general area I'm going to go camp out somewhere and bust something out, god damn it.
ANYWAY.
Nupps. I invented a song about them, which is to the tune 'row row row your boat' and in which you sing the word 'nupp' a lot and then suddenly shriek FUCK. A nupp is a tiny bobble made up by SADISTS from ESTONIA wherein you like, increase five or seven or whatever times into one stitch and then the next row you decrease back into one. I'm going to stop there and let everybody who knits imagine purling seven together. I'll even wait while you finish weeping, and drinking a lot of beer.
(Our Resident Estonian informs me that they're not Real Nupps unless done on 000 -- 1.5mm or thereabouts -- needles. I said if that was the only thing to do in winter I'd rather risk having kids.)
So there's a couple methods for dealing with them.
1. You do them insanely loose, like, I did them what I thought was loosely and then couldn't do it on the return row, so like, you take a toothpick or your own finger and wrap the loops around THAT to make sure they're loose enough. This, if done successfully, increases your chances of doing them without hopping up and down in the middle of the knit shop and expanding everybody else's vocabulary considerably, but is mildly impossible to do.
1a.
jamjar informs me if you stick your off needle through the loops after you make them, it loosens them up and makes them more even.
2. You do them as loose as you can and take a tiny crochet hook and purl them together with that. This is very slow and causes nominally less shrieking frustration, but I still ended up with loops dangling cheerfully free. Did I mention the slow part.
3. You take a crochet hook - and this is the dirty cheater method - about the same size as your needle (note for Americans: this is a good time to learn metric system sizes because an E hook is the same as a 5 needle because they're both 3.25mm and it's a hell of a lot easier to match sizes with the metric labels). In the stitch that you intend to work your nupp in, you pull up the loops with your hook, and then pull them all though and deposit them safely on your working needle. Relatively fast, no escaping loops, much less chance of alcoholism and breaking five years of not smoking like an angry chimney. HOWEVER d/t the way the nupp is made it ends up sitting kind of low on the work, so it really looks like it's a row and a half lower than it should be. This should not be a problem if you, unlike someone I know, do not say many, many angry words in the knit store and switch to this method after one row of the other way.
4. You say 'FUCK THIS BULLSHIT' very loudly, and put beads in the places for the godforsaken nupps. I'm told this is pretty easy, and I have to admit is very pretty and effective in the finished work, but I've never done beaded knitting myself.
So there you have it! Meg's horrifying adventures with nupps. If they weren't so damn pretty when you get them done, I would never do them again.
(On last row of dlf;fdl;f-ing nupps, then two or three rows of charts and then just peaceful, glorious short rows all the way home. I've never been so cheerful over sixty rows of stocking stitch in my life, dudes. If you're thinking about doing Annis, though, may I suggest my current cunning plot for try 2, which is to fucking do a fucking provisional god damn cast on and then do a crocheted edge afterward. It seems to me this would cause much, much less tears and suffering.)
ANYWAY.
Nupps. I invented a song about them, which is to the tune 'row row row your boat' and in which you sing the word 'nupp' a lot and then suddenly shriek FUCK. A nupp is a tiny bobble made up by SADISTS from ESTONIA wherein you like, increase five or seven or whatever times into one stitch and then the next row you decrease back into one. I'm going to stop there and let everybody who knits imagine purling seven together. I'll even wait while you finish weeping, and drinking a lot of beer.
(Our Resident Estonian informs me that they're not Real Nupps unless done on 000 -- 1.5mm or thereabouts -- needles. I said if that was the only thing to do in winter I'd rather risk having kids.)
So there's a couple methods for dealing with them.
1. You do them insanely loose, like, I did them what I thought was loosely and then couldn't do it on the return row, so like, you take a toothpick or your own finger and wrap the loops around THAT to make sure they're loose enough. This, if done successfully, increases your chances of doing them without hopping up and down in the middle of the knit shop and expanding everybody else's vocabulary considerably, but is mildly impossible to do.
1a.
jamjar informs me if you stick your off needle through the loops after you make them, it loosens them up and makes them more even.
2. You do them as loose as you can and take a tiny crochet hook and purl them together with that. This is very slow and causes nominally less shrieking frustration, but I still ended up with loops dangling cheerfully free. Did I mention the slow part.
3. You take a crochet hook - and this is the dirty cheater method - about the same size as your needle (note for Americans: this is a good time to learn metric system sizes because an E hook is the same as a 5 needle because they're both 3.25mm and it's a hell of a lot easier to match sizes with the metric labels). In the stitch that you intend to work your nupp in, you pull up the loops with your hook, and then pull them all though and deposit them safely on your working needle. Relatively fast, no escaping loops, much less chance of alcoholism and breaking five years of not smoking like an angry chimney. HOWEVER d/t the way the nupp is made it ends up sitting kind of low on the work, so it really looks like it's a row and a half lower than it should be. This should not be a problem if you, unlike someone I know, do not say many, many angry words in the knit store and switch to this method after one row of the other way.
4. You say 'FUCK THIS BULLSHIT' very loudly, and put beads in the places for the godforsaken nupps. I'm told this is pretty easy, and I have to admit is very pretty and effective in the finished work, but I've never done beaded knitting myself.
So there you have it! Meg's horrifying adventures with nupps. If they weren't so damn pretty when you get them done, I would never do them again.
(On last row of dlf;fdl;f-ing nupps, then two or three rows of charts and then just peaceful, glorious short rows all the way home. I've never been so cheerful over sixty rows of stocking stitch in my life, dudes. If you're thinking about doing Annis, though, may I suggest my current cunning plot for try 2, which is to fucking do a fucking provisional god damn cast on and then do a crocheted edge afterward. It seems to me this would cause much, much less tears and suffering.)