Woolly Wreath from The Village Yarn Shop - Day 2

Not so fast...

Hey, wait a minute…this is trickier than it looks.

Here I was thinking this would be a long swath of easy knitting, a quick project.  I never learn.  This is quite a finger-tangling little challenge.

Essentially, you work each stitch three times—at least on alternate rows.  You knit into the front of the stitch, pull the yarn down through the needles to loop at around your pinky, then bringing it back up to knit into the back of the stitch.  Then, since you’ve essentially increased one stitch, you decrease it back by slipping the first stitch over the second.  So, while your row is an easy nine stitches long, you’re actually working twenty seven stitch motions.  It makes the other rows—the ones where you simply purl along the back of the work—feel like cake walks.

Don’t get me wrong—it’s pretty.  Much more three-dimensional than the usual knitting.  It rather reminds me of Andy, the dog from Lamb Shoppe in Denver.  Or a Muppet.  Or an albino woolly caterpillar--which, while I thought I made that up, really does exist.

Which reminds me: I stared at the headline for the last post for three days, trying to figure out what didn’t look right, until I realized “Woolly” was missing an “o”.  Sigh.  This is why God gives me editors…