Getting it right

On my new quest to get knitting right, without the mistakes I ignore and put down to my excessive creativity, I have continued to be a serial unpicker. I loved knitting this hat in 4ply leftovers which now has no mistakes. The crown was not working out well with the decreases not matching up with the colourwork but I got there in the end. I feel better for knowing it is right.

but oh the ends... once it was complete, I popped it in my present box for next Christmas. I enjoyed working this pattern and hope to make some more.

After the hat, just before Christmas, I had a run of bad knitting luck. I started my new Avena sweater by Jennifer Steingass but my yarn choices were not a good match. I ordered a chestnut brown for the main body and a ball of king Cole riot to use as a graduated colour section. There were several problems, none of which stopped a capricorn like me from knitting on, the coloured yarn was too hairy and kept dragging on the brown working yarn making the twists for colourwork impossibly hard. I ploughed on. The next problem was that the coloured yarn was a much thinner DK gauge than the Drops Lima producing a very pixelated patterned section. 

It was when I stopped loving the yarn that the mistakes crept in. I knew a few rows were not right and I thought I could fudge the stitch count back to the correct number and use a crochet hook to turn any stitches from brown to the colour as I spotted them. But alas it was not working. It then felt an incredible waste of yarn and time not to make this beautiful jumper properly so I frogged the whole yoke which, by now, was only 4 rows from completion.

I ordered what I think will be a better colourway yarn and this time I will do a test square to check first. Because I knit every evening, I wanted to start a little filler knit while I waited for my new yarn to arrive. Step in this little baby waistcoat but even this was not without its woes. I knit two thirds of the back from a hand rolled ball of dark green yarn from the knitting basket, started a brand new ball of stylecraft to continue and found that the first bit I had used was not the same!!!!! It must have been a spare bit from one of the girls crochet bags that had been picked up off the floor and dropped in the nasket for hoovering purposes.

Frogged it. Swore a bit. Emptied the dishwasher. Went to bed.

Annnnyyway, this is the completed waistcoat which is for a friend of a friend who has paid me to knit it for her little boy. 

I dare not cast on my new Avena until I have a few successful makes under my belt so presently I am knitting another sheep hat because they give me such joy. Friends always offer to buy them from me when they see Andy wearing his so I thought I would get one on the needles. It is not profitable but it pays for my yarn or sometimes my yarn buying mistakes!

Are you knitting at the moment?

Jo xxxxx