The Importance of Gauge and Following Directions

Hello on this summery Thursday!

Things here continue to be busy but mostly favorable :)

I also continue to cast on new projects (see below), work a bit here and there on existing projects (mostly Shawlography and Criterion Cowl, and so finish nothing.  Perhaps one day I'll have 4,000 FOs to show you!!

(I do need to attempt to clear the decks at some point because Casapinka has another MKAL coming up in a few weeks and it requires 1600 yards of four different colors of fingering weight yearn - egads!!!).

In the meantime, I had a fun series of events happen when I started on the I'm Not Who You Think I Am cowl (Neuro is also knitting this and may even be done with it by now!!).

This cowl starts with an i-cord cast on, which I've done before but not exactly in this manner.  The designer provided a link, so I happily worked along with the video.  Only to discover, since I hadn't read ahead, that the video demo is for a larger cast-on than what the pattern calls for; there are an additional two stitches.  I figured I'd just work around this and make sure I ended up with the correct number of stitches by the time I finished this section, which adds 2 stitches every other row.

Then the yarn I'm using for this project - one from this year's dye-fest - had two micro-knots in the zebra section.  I tried to de-fuzz them as best as I could and soldiered on.

The final straw was when I realized that I hated the fabric that I was producing.  I used the designer's recommended needle size and thought - I don't need to gauge swatch, this is a cowl for crying out loud.

Well, I actually went up THREE needle sizes and am now getting a lovely, more drapey fabric.  Since the first attempt had two micro-knots in it, I just cut the yarn and started over:

(The top item is the second attempt.)

Now I'm trucking right along and enjoying this pattern.  It's knit flat and then origamied into a cowl at the end - that will be fun to see how it all comes together!

Stay well and safe!