Today, my friends, is the last day of our half-month ‘Round the Colour Wheel Make-Along. And I have to tell you—it’s been quite a challenge!
As per usual, I am a bit behind on my project (as all my personal projects tend to go), but I’ve learned quite a bit. For starters, I am TERRIBLE at stranded knitting. Prior to this make-along, I would use two colours on one hand and treat it similarly to the way I knit my tail ends into the back of the yarn. The results have always been sloppy and inconsistent. This challenge, with a small hat project (Zumbra), gave me the space to try out other techniques to see if I can finally become a bit more consistent and… how do I put this delicately… “not sucky.” HAH!
Stranded Variations
- In phase one, I worked two rows in my usual method. You can see some of the CC is more elongated or sunk in.
- In phase two, I tried working one round twice. First, working only with the MC and slipping the unworked CC stitches, then, I worked the CC colour stitches, slipping the already-worked MC stitches. This seemed to work at first, but there were two consequences. One, it took a lot longer. HA! Two, slipped stitches tend to come out at a tighter gauge than usual, because the strand at the back is shorter. It was harder to maintain tension at the correct gauge.
- In phase three, I tried to work with two hands: MC on the right, CC in the left. This did not work at all. AT ALL. For whatever reason, my left finger doesn’t follow instructions from my brain and can’t seem to curl enough to hold the yarn and move it to the needle. The yarn kept dropping off or slipping back into my hand. I also couldn’t get my other fingers to hold the working yarn. I see now why I can’t crochet that way, either. What a useless left hand. GRIN. Anyways, I worked two rounds in phase three and hated it so much that I tinked back to re-do.
- In phase four, and I think is the best looking, I worked with one colour at a time on the same row, but not with two fingers. I worked the MC like normal, dropped it, picked up CC, and worked it like normal. Dropped CC, picked up MC, worked the stitch. It was slightly slower, but I actually found a nice little rhythm by round three and continued the rest of the colourwork section in this manner. I started to get a little sloppier at the end, but I blame the late hour.
So, my hat made progress and I’m rather pleased to have found a little more love for stranded knitting. I think I am going to rip back to the brim and re-work all of the cololurwork section this way (especially since phase two changed my gauge). I’ll let you know how it goes!
Make-Along Highlights
Over in our Discord group, friends shared their Colour-Along progress, and it was so exciting to see the new things they were trying. Attempting fractal spinning, or stripes, or practice with split single crochet stitches… all new challenges to up the colour game. Here are some of the highlights from the last two weeks:
Tomorrow, I’ll draw two winners from the pot and announce them in Discord, so be sure to drop your photos in to the channel for your entry! It’s been so much fun making along with you all.
