One of the aspects of yarn-crafts that I love, is that I never stop learning. Recent mistakes on my current project help me reflect on lessons learned.

After Over 30 Years – New Lessons Learned

First of all let me state that I love knitting and crocheting. So, even when I make a mistake and/or have to rip something out, I don’t mind. It just means doing more of something I love.

That being said, I still try an avoid mistakes.

My current baby blanket project is helping me understand more about knitting. I’m less familiar with working in cotton than with wool and even acrylic. I’ve never been a huge fan of cotton yarn. While I’m enjoying this particular cotton/soy yarn (Millamia Baby Soft Cotton/Soy), I’m having to figure out how to do some things. Connecting a new ball of yarn, weaving in ends, etc.

I tried two different methods of starting a new ball of yarn. Russian join and weaver’s knot were the first two. They worked okay, but not as invisible as I’d hoped. I ended up just starting a new ball at the beginning of a row of knitting and use my labor-intensive method of weaving in ends.

The Other Big Mistake

I made a big mistake on the edging design for this blanket as well.

Basically what I did was pick up 160 stitches on each side of the blanket. Knitting-in-the-round, I did one round of purl stitch and then two rounds of plain knit (stockinette) stitch, and then bind off. I’ve used this edge stitch in the past and it creates a faux tubular stitch.

After binding off over half of the stitches on this edge, I realized two errors in my design decision:

1. Cotton yarn doesn’t curl in a tight tubular way as much as wool
2. The picking up of stitches in combination with such a narrow border didn’t stop the fabric from curling with cotton fabric

So, I ripped out this mistake and re-started a different border.

Current Knitting

Now, I’m simply knitting 1×1 ribbing on 7 sts until it’s long enough and then sewing it onto each edge of the blanket.

It seems to be working in two ways. Firstly, it doesn’t detract from the simple design of the baby blanket. And more importantly, the 1×1 rib along with the sewn-on method of attaching it, stops the fabric from curling.

This old dog is open to any new tricks.