Heartfelt

It's a self-evident truth that V-day is nearly upon us. Recently, as I perused the assortment of regular daily emails that fly into my Inbox, I happened upon this from Knitting Daily, a charming and completely free-of-charge felted heart pattern designed by Mags Kandis.

In a eureka! moment I realized that my knitting of these lumpy little valentines would accomplish much in one fell swoop:

• I'd use up scraps of yarn;
• I'd practice "wrapping" stitches, as the pattern called for;
• I'd practice short rows;
• I'd try out a knitting app I'd downloaded onto my Iphone;
• and...I'd end up with several funky knitted heart-like things.

Well, it all worked like a charm, I'm happy to say. 

Knitted heart in primitive evolutionary stage.

Does not this open-faced heart resemble a ginko leaf? And gingkos are evolutionarily both primitive, in the sense of being very ancient, and also sui generis among trees.  (Don't ask why I know this.)

Following the 18-row pattern, I did a long-tail cast-on (thanks to the Knitting Goddess, who demo'd it for me and led me through two practices), reviewed the wrap-and-turn process of short rows (again thanks to the Knitting Goddess, who was, I think, born knowing all of this very useful stuff), and worked my way down the lines. But...I'm not a diligent note-taker, and it soon was apparent that I needed an aide-memoire.

Then I recalled that a few weeks ago I'd done a search in the App Store using the keyword "knitting," and had found a few gizmos to download.  (About these as a group, stay tuned for a future post.) One, Knit Counter Lite, seemed like it might be just the ticket, and I must say it was. With a mere tap of my pinkie, I kept track of rows and where I was, exactly, in the midst of them.

This might not seem like such a big deal to those who enjoy the tactile sensations of paper and pencil to tick off the rows completed, but I am the kind of person who starts with a paper and pencil and then gets annoyed because I don't want to put down the knitting to use them, so I say forget that, and I then do promptly forget where I am in the pattern.  With the Knit Counter Lite app, I could hold the knitting and simultaneously add each row with a tiny tap, or subtract  if I ripped one (or more) out. No longer was I lost nel mezzo del caminn, as it were.

I can't remember if this app was free of charge, and my Iphone won't tell me. A more sophisticated Knit Counter by the same company (Cordless Dog) costs $3.99 to download, and it's probably worth the price of admission, as it does quite a bit more than the Lite version.

Practical-minded knitters are undoubtedly wondering what I plan to do with these fuzzy felted hearts...and so am I, though Ted thinks they make a great bikini.

At this point I'm not worried about their purpose, but more inclined to say, along with M. Pascal, "the heart has its reasons...."

(Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point.)