The Genius of Elizabeth Zimmerman

I spent all night knitting and re knitting this little collar - how smart Elizabeth Zimmerman must have been to invent it. I had DVD instructions and it took me forever to get it. Part of the re knitting was due to the fact that I'm working in Portuguese for the first time, so I kept making messy stitches which had to be redone, but the structure of the collar honestly made no sense to me at all - and even now, with a successful swatch under my belt, I'm baffled by how it works.

The edge of the collar looks a bit ragged because there are two cast offs on the edge - the one at the top and bottom is the Portuguese cast off demonstrated by Andrea Wong on her DVD, and I think it looks better than the section in the centre.

I chose to put a line of purl (an option demonstrated on the DVD) along the line where the collar joins the shoulders in the end. I thought it looked neater than the wobble of the increases - not everyone's increases will wobble like mine, of course. It took me a while to realise that as I was purling, and Meg Swanson's instructions were for knit, I had to reverse the increases to make them work.

So, finally, after hours of tussling and re knitting, I had a great little collar. And I don't think it will suit the butterfly bolero - too angular in shape. Andy agreed, but then he said: 'You could round the edges of the collar.' And he's right. I could. But not this time round. I've enough to be going on with.