Monday, January 15, 2007

Nupping madness

The last couple of nights, I've been knitting nupps. And it's been hell. There are only 22 rows of them in the project, but that's quite a lot of nupps... I'm really glad I'm Not the Only One who Has Difficulty with these...Although Fleegle makes them look easy in thick yarn... I suspect they're like bullion knots in embroidery; you love them or you develop some pathologic avoidance-thing...

But I watched Troy this evening while knitting. It's a long film - 156 minutes. I'm not overly keen on the pretty, so Brad Pitt and Orlando Bloom leave me cold (although it was excellent to see the truly decorative Sean Bean in a role which didn't have 'Dead Best Friend/Dead Big Brother' written all over it from moment one, and the supporting cast like Peter O'Toole and John Shrapnel were brilliant); I'm also not a great fan of the 'thick-of-battle-people-being-beheaded-by-archers/boiling-oil-on-sticks/cannon-fire/orcs/whatever' scenes, so this should have been a good knitting film... (And thinking of massed battle scenes, this, seen first on nhw's livejournal, proves what a relatively sane activity knitting is... Although not if you're a yarn company owner with a sock club. Obviously).

That was without the nupps, though. 7 rows, I did. 7 rows in two and a half hours... I'll be thinking very hard before I go a-nupping again. More successful than last night though, when my West Wing episode (I'm working at one-a-week speed and have just got to Season 7) had me yelling at the screen so often I ended up switching to plain stocking-stitch...

Can't blog the project in question for a while, so in the meantime, here's a completely gratuitous photo of Amelia on some newly-dyed yarn... I'll shut up now...

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm knitting nupps too, and with lace weight. I figured out that they're not so hard to knit if you use a small straight pin to lift the stitches, entering under them from the right hand side. Then slip the needle into the space created and remove the pin. Don't remove the stitches from the left needle until you are sure that you've successfully pulled the yarn through with the right needle.

Good luck!

Anonymous said...

If you're doing the Swallowtail shawl, they're absolutely worth it - they create a texture and a teeny bit of weight (at least in laceweight, which doesn't have much to start with) that sort of finish it off perfectly. The other thing that *really* helps with them is to have sharp needle tips. I also managed to figure out a way to sort of hold an extra-loose yarnover on my needle for the nupps, which made catching them again on the following row much easier. Keep going, if for no reason than you'll be so happy when you're done with them. ;-)

Pig wot flies said...

I thought bobbles were bad enough. Nupps look even fiddlier. No advice, but good luck!

Anonymous said...

Ooooh! Sean Bean! Truly decorative indeed....

fleegle said...

They are easy in thin yarn too. I just did bunch of P8-together nupps in Zephyr. No problem if you leave enough slack. Really!

Anonymous said...

I'm put off seeing Troy by the presence of Brad Pitt, who to my eye isn't even pretty, but somewhat resembles a pig.

Nupps, eh. The things I learn from blogs!

Stitch 'n Dye said...

Liz - and Wibbo

The ONLY reason I would watch Troy is for Sean Bean. PS I saw him first. I even watched that Football film he was in cos he was in it.

For xmas my sis bought me a copy of a book about the new Sharpe films. I'll bring along to Stash sometimes and we can ogle together...

Knittiana! said...

My cats used to find the most obscure things to sleep on. Lace projects, freshly washed and blocked for example. But how can you be mad at something so cute? I never managed.