You know how it is – you go to your Local Yarn Store to get stuff for your next project, but it is out of stock and you have to wait for it to be ordered in, so you arrive home empty-handed with twitchy fingers desperately needing to cast on something!
So you check out a few magazines and decide on something completely unplanned. The gauge works, the colours match, only thing is the main colour is tucked away in your drawers already knitted up in a garment! A garment you’ve only worn once. Mmm.
Faced with miles of stocking stitch in the round up to the armholes, I decided to adopt one of my favourite mottos: turn a disadvantage into an advantage, and took the opportunity to try and improve my knitting technique and speed. I’m an English style knitter and work with the yarn in my right hand, but I’ve always clumsily dropped the right needle, picked up the yarn with my thumb and forefinger, wound it around the needle, dropped the yarn, picked up the needle, etc. While knitting this top I’ve been practicing using just my forefinger to wind the yarn around the needle, and although I was tediously slow and bumble-fingered for the first few rows, it soon became easier to do, and now I am pleased to announce it is second nature to me, and I am a faster knitter – I should have done this 20 years ago!
Brown is not one of my favourite colours, but there is something about this yarn I really do like – it is heathered and slightly silvery, and I do think it shows it’s character better knitted up in plain old stocking stitch. I’ve combined it with some stash items – pale blues, ivory, and a hint of pink – and quite like the result so far.
I think this is going to be a much better top-for-mucking-around-in-with-jeans than the last one!
Oh – and the yarn has now arrived in for my next project 🙂
pattern scissors cloth 