The Second Gift of Christmas

This is (was?) the second thing I worked on (on which I worked?) (tenses and prepositions are clearly not my friends today). I know I didn't tell you about it. I was supposed to, last week, which we are all pretending is this week. You know, when I was supposed to be blogging every day.

This is the Quilted Cowl by Sarah Anthony. Once you knit the center section, you pick up stitches all around for the stockinette border, yo k2tog for a picot row, knit some more stockinette and then, using At Least a Six Foot Tail (!) sew down the live stitches. This makes for a lovely understated border, but I have to use Six Feet of yarn to Sew Down almost 200 Live Stitches.

Suffering from an acute case of Swelledheaditis Flushed with the success of the Leaf Lace Scarf, I just couldn't leave this one alone either.

This change, though, was just plain laziness and cheating, (and it showed, but I'm getting ahead of the story). I did a few rows of garter stitch and added the picot bind-off from Louisa Harding's Knitting Little Luxuries (the bind-off for the fingerless mitts I screwed up, see earlier post) to three of the sides, thinking to keep a cleaner look down the front of the cowl (or so I told myslef). Except I didn't like that end. So I went ahead and did the picot bind-off. The picots were too close together. They also looked huge.

There was another issue. Garter stitch is wider than stockinette and, because I didn't adjust the number of stitches I picked up, the edges were distorted. I tired to rationalize. It's really only the buttonhole end I need to worry about. I muttered. The other end will be hidden. I justified. The long edges don't look that bad. I whined. Maybe if I just frog the bind-off on that one end and space the picots out farther.

This was clearly a case where the original design was way better than the modification. At the time (late November/early December) I decided I wasn't going to re-do it unless by some miracle I finished all my knitting by the week before Christmas. No such miracle occurred, but I still ripped out the bind-off. All of it. In fact, I frogged the whole modification, reclaimed the yarn and knit the border according to pattern, sewing down the live stitches as called for before reblocking.

Details. Yarn: Malabrigo Silky Merino in Burgundy, almost exactly 1 skein. Just a few feet left.
Needles: Addi Turbos US 6/4 mm.
Buttons: Darn. I forgot to take a picture wth the real buttons. They were pewter with a circle of tiny ivy leaves. I really wanted to gloat about the buttons. Double darn.
Modifications: Not a one.

Sometimes the designer is right.