Maverick Cowl from Lucky Ewe Yarn - Day 3

Color and shine...

Another reader mentioned the beautiful sheen on this yarn. Merino is a lovely fiber, but when you add the touch of silk this fiber has you get this marvelous shimmer that works beautifully on colors like blue and gray. It makes the blue look more like Caribbean waters and the grey look more like silver. And oh, the softness…

While it’s not apparent on this circular needle right now, this is going to be a cowl of a nice, generous length. Those are always my favorite. The ones that wrap once around never quite seem to fall right around my neck—they always look the wrong size (even though cowls are “one size fits all”).

Having the lacework double back on itself by swapping out the K2TOG to SSK creates a clever chevron pattern that draws attention nicely to the center of the piece. It also adds a nice “halfway” benchmark that lets me know I’m on track to finish in time. 

I think this could make a lovely school or team colors gift for someone. It’s not quite as obvious as straight block stripes, but still makes the bold color combo statement a collegiate or sports fan would appreciate. This one, however, I’m keeping for myself.

Yellow Rose Mitts from Yarnivore - Day 4

If at first you don't K3TOG...

Let me just say this:  it is INSANELY difficult to knit three together on size 0 needles.   Especially with a beautiful but splitty yarn like this one.  

The number of times I wrestled that skinny little needle through those three loops only to come up with a single ply—well, it should be illegal.  Several not-nice things came out of my mouth after the third or fourth try on any given row.

So, I did what any smart knitter does—I found a work-around.  

The essential purpose of K3TOG is to decrease by two stitches, making a “point” of sorts.  It’s designed to lean one way, as the far easier—in this case—S1-K2TOG-PSSO (slip one, knit two together, pass slipped stitch over) accomplishes the same decrease leaning the other way.  So, I needed to decrease by two in the correct direction, as it were.  And I needed something that could be accomplished without nasty words or broken needles. 

I came up with knitting two of the three together—usually possible with sufficient grunting—, returning the knit stitch to the right hand needle, and then passing the final stitch over that one before returning it to the right hand needle.  It wasn’t perfect, but it leaned the correct direction, decreased the correct amount of stitches, and didn’t result in an angry knitter.  

Did I make up a stitch?  I don’t know. I later discovered that the folks at Heartstrings Fiber Arts came up with the same idea, so I know I'm probably not the first person to face this predicament.  

What I did do was make my knitting experience a whole lot nicer.  And on a weekend filled up by a killer set of revisions on my current book due Tuesday, that made all the difference in the world.

Alexandra Scarf from Gauge Knits - Day 4

Mental motivational trickery...

Cue BB King, the thrill is gone.  I’m halfway through and like lots of big projects, this last half feels harder and longer than the first.  Three more feet of zig-zags is looming wearily over me, a daunting I-can’t-get-there-from-here finish line.  Time to get my head in a new place about this project.

Now is the time the little boosts of knitting serve to encourage us.  I was knitting with a friend the other day, and we talked about the mini-joy of reaching the end of a challenging row with the right amount of stitches. You know what I’m talking about:  the pattern says something like “knit 4” and—lo and behold—you’ve got exactly four stitches left on your needle!  You didn’t botch this row!  Every knitter I know gets a little “zing” when that happens.  The longer the row, the bigger the zing, yes?

Another midway boost for me is what I call “pattern immersion.”  That’s my term for that magic moment when you don’t need to look at the written pattern to execute your repeat—you’ve memorized what comes next.  Most times it comes organically somewhere in the middle of a project.  This time, I needed to make it happen.  Having to keep peeking back at the written pattern was part of the reason this scarf was becoming tedious, and that needed to change.

I took 30 minutes and analyzed the set of left-leaning rows and those that leaned to the right.  I stared at the stitches until I could see that the two stockinette stitches to the right of those zig-zaging yarn-overs were the ones that were K2Tog’d.  Now I don’t have to count rows or stitches, just look for those two stitches.  

Conversely, staring hard at the stitches showed me that the YO and SSK happens right overtop the yarn-over from two rows below.  Now, the knitting tells me what I have to do next, not a constant glance over to the paperwork.  Sure, I check back every few rows to make sure I’m where I thought I was, but this little shift is enough to keep me motivated and heading toward the finish line!

Hey, a knitter’s gotta do what a knitter’s gotta do.