Tuesday 8 September 2009

Yet Another Ribwarmer

The ribwarmer is my benchmark garment. When I can turn out neat, beautifully knitted rib warmers that fit the recipient, then I'll be able to knit!

I got a pile of lovely green waterwheel acrylic chunky for £6 from the charity shop. I planned to make another Stockport, but Rowan's Cocoon yarn isn't a chunky either. I thought it would be, seeing as it isn't an Aran, but it isn't a chunky either, so it is difficult to find a substitute yarn for Coccon. I discovered this after I'd gone away for the weekend with only a few needles in the basket. Read through the entire Rowan book. I didn't have the needles for the only chunky pattern in the book. Growl.

Began a scarf from the book, Rochdale by Martin Storey. Hm. It would take 5 balls of Cocoon, which is an expensive scarf by any standards, and I wasn't keen on the pattern overall. The fabric is a rather nice cable and moss stitch and I did like the effect of the right side of the fabric, but the wrong side was very ugly. I hate scarves with a wrong side - however I arrange the thing the wrong side always shows. And the scarf was too narrow to fold in two and sew up (and anyway, I'd knit on a circular needle if I was going to make it into a tube). Not impressed. I might have carried on if I'd had a circular needle to hand and if I'd felt like casting on another pattern repeat to make it wide enough to be two sided. But I didn't. Frogged the six inches I'd started and hummed a little tune while I thought what to knit with only one yarn, two needles and no pattern.

Of course! A ribwarmer for Andy. He liked the colour of the chunky, and I want to practise being consistent so off I went. It was a wet weekend, so I knitted the whole front. Hurray! And, it does look a lot neater because I wrote down which way I was slipping the edges and which way I was wrapping the short rows and heroically stuck to it. Being consistent is definitely part of the secret of good knitting.

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