More cat toys finished

I finished another load of cat toys last night and delivered them this morning. The toy jar at my vet's office was empty except for a few balls and one mouse. Must not have been a color anyone wanted. I've seen people empty the whole jar on the counter to pick the right color for their cat.

If I knit a couple of toys each night, I can finish a bunch in one month. I try to knit them before I start on my other knitting or spinning projects. Sometimes when I don't have the concentration for a lace or other project, I'll watch TV in the evenings and bang out one toy after another. I've even taken them along as car knitting when we travel. I have the patterns memorized I've made so many of them. Lately, I've been knitting fish as they are quick to knit and a change of pace from mice and whales. After 6 years of knitting cat toys, I do sometimes get bored knitting toys. LOL!

I decided to start a new lace project yesterday but got discouraged pretty quickly. The pattern is a beautiful scarf knit in variegated yarn. The instructions are terrible. The charts are chopped into pieces and not even printed at the same scale/size. I was going to copy them and paste together but that won't work because of the different sizes. I'm a very visual lace knitter and I need to understand and "see" how the pattern is going to work. Now what? Give up? No, I paid $7.00 for this pattern and I like it too much.

I sat down to chart the whole thing by hand using the written instructions. Guess what? The written instructions don't match the charts in the pattern! I checked online and there are no errata on the web for this scarf. This must not have been test knit before it was printed. Tell me, wouldn't you rather someone test knit a pattern and find the errors rather than having to pay for the privilege to fix the mistakes? Oops!

This shouldn't be hard to chart. The pattern is garter stitch with the yarnover holes forming a diamond in the center and V's coming off it on either side. With pencil in hand and several sheets of graph paper, I sat down and charted it. Even upsized it for a stole. I took my draft to the computer, charted it using Excel, saved it, and printed it out on a legal size sheet of paper. I'm ready to roll!