Anhinga Takes Off

I've been going round and round and round on the off-blog project. It progresses by about a millimetre for each row (more after blocking, but not much) and at the moment a row is about 700 stitches. I opted to do the version which is 10 rows longer and have been very busy avoiding doing the sum 10 x 700 in my head.

Last night, just after I'd finished a row, I noticed that I had a small, deep, fresh cut on my left index finger. It's about a quarter of an inch long and was obviously done with something very sharp, but I have no idea what. I hadn't even been in the kitchen, and there was no drink taken. It's in exactly the same place as the bad cut I once gave myself with a bread knife, but I use a different sort of bread knife nowadays. A mystery. Anyway, until it's healed, I won't be working with very fine silk yarn which could a) open it up and b) cause me to bleed all over my knitting, so the inevitable has happened. I have cast on for Anhinga.

The preparations have been feverish. I have been following Smashing Puffin's progress avidly, and she has been very helpful, not to say patient, with my badgering questions about Rowan Bamboo Tape.

There has been a lot of this.


I'm not a very good swatcher. I try, but the results tend to be inconclusive. I also spent a lot of time dreaming about it on Friday night, but that didn't yield any practical help - I dreamt about a lot of things on Friday night so don't feel too sorry for me being reduced to dreaming about knitting.

I also looked up what an Anhinga is. I hadn't noticed that the other patterns in the booklet are all birds so I was bit surprised to learn that it is one of these.

Photo by Tom Davis

I can see why though.

All of this asking and swatching and googling hasn't actually made any difference to what I've cast on, except that I'm not making it a size bigger, which I might otherwise have done.


This is the back, and the colour is Gale, 713.