Last week, I said I was going to try to make this cowl. I went to a fancy yarn shop. I talked so some very sweet ladies that worked there. I picked out stunning yarn and circular needles. I watched lots of videos and learned how to purl and slip stitches. I emailed back and forth with Robyn, my knitting mentor.
I did a few practice runs on cheap yarn. I cast on hundreds of stitches with my pretty new yarn. I watched more videos and sent more emails and finally realized that it was just a bit too much. The pattern wasn't turning out like it said it would. And the stitches were insanely tight on the needle. Something wasn't going right and I didn't have the patience to re-figure it out. So I pulled out thousands of stitches. And untangled my very pretty yarn.
And then I went back to the basics.
I am doing regular knit stitches (also known as the garter stitch). But when knitted in a round, they have this awesome "v" pattern on one side and the "normal" knitted pattern on the back side.
I am switching colors every row. (In the photo above you can see I am 7 stitches into a new gray row.) Every row is about 300 stitches. It's squished on my 24" circular needles (which is why it looks ruffled) but I think the finished cowl will be about 50 inches in circumference. And the pattern is turning out so awesome. I really love it. I am addicted to knitting and addicted to the fact that switching colors and knitting in a round makes something easy look intricate.
For what I am doing here, this is the only video I needed. This video talks about adding in a second color of yarn. I imagine this sounds complicated if you are not already familiar with knitting, but really - it's surprisingly easy, especially compared with what I was trying to do! I can't wait to see how it turns out at the end.
