Certain activities can seem incredibly daunting when you don’t know how they’re done…I get that…but being afraid of trying a knit stitch pattern seems odd to me.

Knitting Preferences

Don’t get me wrong…I can totally understand not wanting to knit cables, or avoiding doing lace knitting for your entire knitting life. But I will never understanding fearing a technique…like steeking, or stranded knitting or intarsia. What’s the worst possible outcome of trying something new? You ruin some yarn? You waste some of your knitting time? You get kicked out of TKGA?

Again, if you hate the look of entrelac, or if you just can’t stand bringing the yarn back and forth for a stitch pattern like woven stitch or double-knitting, you have every right to avoid those techniques like the plague. But avoiding something because you’re afraid of how difficult it looks? No…that does not work for me…and yes, I can deny you your feelings…it’s my blog.

True Confession:

I am TERRIBLE at correcting a dropped stitch in a garter stitch fabric, so I hate making mistakes on simple garter stitch fabric and often end up frogging multiple rows instead of fixing a column of stitches.

All that being said, I often hear how daunting one of my pattern designs looks.

The Koigu Cross Stitch Scarf involves at least two different colorways of fine-gauge yarn, casting on hundreds of stitches and has this crazy looking cross-over-laciness to it that confounds some knitters.

But fear not…once you understand how elongated stitches work, and my technique for crossing them…I think you’ll find the thought of doing this stitch incredibly useful and fun. Yes, the two rows that make up the “cross stitch” in the pattern take a bit more time than a standard row of knitting, but they also create almost an inch of fabric length…so the extra time you spend on these two rows is more than made up for in the length of your knitted fabric!

So…for those who have purchased the pattern…but had some trepidation about doing it…pull it out and take a look a this video tutorial on the crossover technique that I videotaped just for you!

Current Knitting

It’s incredibly satisfying to keep adding to the pile of completed craft show items.

The latest Ombre Wrap is now complete.

It’s very similar to the first one I did like this and I think it will be one of the first items to sell at the next show. I’ll be interested to see how well these fine-gauge garter stitch rectangles sell. The yarn is inexpensive and they are incredibly easy to knit…they just take a lot of knitting time.

I also started a new Knitted Cross Stitch project.

I’m again using two colorways of Groovy Hues Fiber yarns, and I think it’s going to be as beautiful (or more so) as the last one. I’m also thinking about making this one larger to be used as a wrap instead of just a scarf.