Flair
There is something So Dam Satisfying about this stitch. I think it's because it's built around ribbing (which is easy and practical and functional always looks good) but has just enough flair that you don't get bored. And really, I know it looks a bit fancy (sort of like cables? sort of like little starbursts? sort of like something all together different?), so you kind of want to peer at it and go 'huh, how does it do that?!' But really it's just a slightly glorified version of the most basic decreases. Like really, if you can do left/right-leaning decreases [...]
Semblance
That pretty little bit of business? The one with the speckles & the big fat yarn? The one I knit in two sittings? It's out! It's called Semblance, and you can find it on ravelry and payhip. This is one of those magical patterns that looks so much more complicated than it is. That fancy stitch? Yeah, it's precisely five stitches wise and two rows tall. And if you've ever worked even the most basic increases and decreases, you've totally already got the skills you need to work it (though of course, it's all explained in frankly alarming detail in [...]
All done
And here we are, all fixed and back together and ends woven in and blocked! And yes, I fully admit that no one other than me was going to notice the wobbly bits that were driving me to distraction. But it's my hat, so I get to fix things that will bug me, even if they won't bother anyone else. Plus this way I get to inflict The Ridiculous Mending Saga on innocent bystanders (that's you). Enough folks were missing this one that I'll bring it back, likely some time next week, so you won't have long to wait if [...]
Spiffy
I suspect it says absolutely nothing flattering about my character (or at least my attention span), but every single time I get to one of the bright speckles, I go 'ooooh, spiffy' and feel better about the world for like two whole seconds. I'll drag this out somewhere photogenic and see what we can do about getting the pattern for it back out early next month!
Completely fair
And back up we go. I timed it, and each column (assuming I'm not stopping to take photos or videos) takes me about four minutes to run down and then work back up. So including the time to rip the decreases out and reknit them, fixing this will take less than two hours of work. Which, given that I knit the whole hat in two afternoons, seems completely fair.
Don’t yank
Ooooooh, ok, so this is a sneaky thing that sometimes happens when you run a column of stitches down. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong. It doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the yarn. It's just a thing that happens sometimes. All you do is clip it and set the strands free. Clipping works better than yanking. Yanking makes things even fuzzier. So just clip it and keep on going, it'll all come out in the end.
Improvements
The hat improvement continues. Now all I have to do is run each column of purl stitches down to the cast on, then work them back up as twisted stitches instead. I'm doing it on the inside of the hat, because that way I'll be working with them as knit stitches instead of purl stitches, and I find it faster to work knit stitches back up. But that's just a matter of preference. You could do it either way and the result would be the same. I'll work my way around the hat and do each column in turn [...]
Not tidy
Ok so something was bugging me. There were a handful of spots on this hat where the stitches just aren't quite as tidy as I want them to be. Not horrible...but just not tidy. And look, they'd probably block out. And they're certainly the sort of thing that literally no one else will ever notice (despite fears to the contrary, people just do NOT come up to strangers on the street and say 'I noticed some slight irregularities in the texture of your hat and am scandalized, explain yourself at once'). But they're bugging me. And, in large part [...]
And yet
I am being too picky...way, Way, WAY too picky. I know it. You know it. We all know it. And yet... Should you wish to watch the carnage in real time, you may do so here.
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