I’m very careful about reading patterns & charts, because I’m both a process and product knitter and hooker, and I want the final product to look right. I even swatch (although I only wash swatches for sweaters—unwashed swatching is good enough for hats and shawls).
So I just spent a merry half an hour counting stitches on the left needle and consulting the chart of the hat I’m working on, and I could find no way to make it work except by starting with a purl instead of a knit in moss stitch, and this made no sense (as the previous row both started and ended on the correct stitch, and there were the correct number of stitches from the stitch marker).
I decide to start with a purl, pick up my circs, and see I’d already done the first knit stitch. To lock in that stitch marker, as you do.
Front view of hat—note how the curve is coming along!
I’ve been working on my Urban Aran Hat between messing around with my exhaust system and running around with my daily life. I’ve made some progress, but not as much as I’d hoped. Still, better than not having picked it up at all!
I knit hats on the smallest circular needles that I can. This cord is 6” long, and the shortest this interchangeable company makes (the needles make the circ bigger, naturally). This makes the knitting easier on me, as the stitches spring around with little effort. It does make the hat seem small, even if I did cast on almost 100 stitches in Aran weight yarn!
See how all the stitches are scrunched? When I start decreasing, it will pop open!
I’m getting much more comfortable with the pattern. I don’t need the key right now (although that will change once I pass this section!), and I rarely need to remind myself how to do the stitches.
I’m still not one of those people who can just drop the two stitches and cable, although I know it would be much faster. I grab my little cable holder and keep my sanity. However, there will come a day when I will do that!
Moss stitch continues to be fun, and I’m not understanding how people get lost in it. If the stitch below and behind is a 1 or a 0, do a 0 or a 1. It’s true it’s not explained that way. But maybe it’s more because I knit Continental so the switch is just a finger wave. I’ve heard so many horror stories about moss stitch. Tell me yours?
Thirty more rows to go on this hat! I’m not sure if it will be one or two more posts—we’ll see how fast it works up.
But how did I get that nice, flat picture without dropping stitches? Well…
Front view only looks flat from a carefully chosen angle—camera tricks are your friends.
I didn’t. It’s a very pretty optical illusion based on angle, popping out and popping in until it looked ‘right’, and taking a bunch of pictures and re-doing until I had it just right. I didn’t even have to photoshop. 🙂 Never trust pictures!
Life & Fiber 