Getting on back on track.

I hadn't seen Diane in a while and she brought a couple of projects that had been giving her trouble. She's knitting a newborn sweater with the feather and fan pattern. She was having trouble with pattern working out correctly on the sleeve. It turned out that she was misreading the pattern repeat. We mapped out the stitches on paper and when she began the row again, she had her "aha" moment.

She picked out the colors for a circular blanket pattern. It's very similar to the Artful Afghan.  We played around with the colors; this always reminds me of the shell game.  

The pattern starts with only 4 stitches on double pointed needles.  Not fun by a long shot.  She tried the double points and found it to be really difficult. She tried to do it magic loop and that didn't work either.  You really have to start this on the double points.  I got it going for her to save her some anguish.  Knitting is not supposed to cause mental anguish.

Donna has continued to struggle with uneven rows in her stockinette.  She learned that this phenomenon is called “Rowing out”. Often the purl row is the culprit, coming out more loosely than the knit row.  Here is a link to an article that goes into more depth.

She has tried using her interchangeable needles and having a smaller tip for the purl row.  That mitigated the unevenness slightly but not consistently.  She played around with tightening her stitches too.  Diane knits American style as well and Donna mirrored her.  She told us that the way Diane threw her yarn around the needle was the same way she saw in videos for counteracting the unevenness.  Lo and behold, it seemed to work.  Her last four rows were all even. 

Hold your breath for her (figuratively of course).  She's going to keep practicing to make sure the action comes naturally before beginning a new project.