This picture is me getting on really well with a brioche stitch cowl in Debbie Bliss Paloma yarn. I got the yarn in a sale (along with a couple of others, which I have plans for already and will roll out for you at some point) at the Jelly Knit Night:
It's baby alpaca and merino and therefore very bouncy and I-will-squeeze-it-to-death! soft. I knew it wanted to keep its squashy, airy character and so I found a great, simple cowl pattern here, got Knit Pro Nova needle tips to go with my interchangeable set from Meadow Yarn (you can use straight needles but I love the ease and lightness of these babies) and got ready to learn brioche stitch. I was very excited about this project because I love the feel and colour of the yarn (I'm going with the orange and saving the pink for later), enjoy knitting big, chunky things and wanted to try rib stitch, of which brioche is an interesting variety. The advantage of brioche over the usual knit/purl combo is that this will end up being the same on both sides.
It looked an unholy mess after a couple of rows but, as if by magic, the distinctive cornrows of a rib stitch started to emerge. A miracle! I was really enjoying how quickly this was producing a very light but incredibly warm, springy and snugly fabric. I cannot extol the virtues of this stitch enough: it is delightful and the Paloma yarn seems made for it.
What I didn't bank on was the price of having a cowl with identical sides.
Shortly after the top photo was taken, I had completed about 10" of cowl and used most of my 50g ball of yarn (yup, this stitch is a hungry beast but worth it) when I suddenly realised I was faced with a stitch that I needed to slip but I had just slipped the last one, so I should've been on a knit two together. Oh dear. I studied the row and tried to work out what I'd done wrong but couldn't see how to rectify it. Feck. I tried ripping back a couple of rows but then couldn't get the stitches back on to the needle correctly. Feckity, feckity feck!
*kicks the living arse out of her knitting bag and makes noises like a possessed weasel*
*cough* That's better. Brioche stitch is pretty easy once you get going but it's complicated to fix if you get it wrong. The online advice I found wasn't very helpful and I think I probably need a better grasp of how stitches work to be able to problem solve. So, I decided to undo the whole thing, order a couple of 'sewing bible' type books to help my knowledge and start again. No point sulking, let's move on...
Having ballsed that up, I set upon completing the moss stitch neck-warmer from my last blog post. In the intervening couple of weeks it had been transformed into a 'doggy blanket' at the insistence of my three-year old (besides, I'd made a few mistakes in it and found a yarn that was much more 'me' in colour and feel - see Brioche Cowl tale of woe above). So here is the Doggy Blanket:
Moss stitch is good fun and, like brioche, looks unsightly for a few rows before the little springy tufts start appearing and you find yourself exclaiming, 'So that's why they call it 'moss'...' while your husband looks askance at you with an expression that lets you know just how much of a grip on reality you have: 'Great, she's talking to herself about the knitting now'. You just have to keep your brain in the 'knit, purl, knit, purl' zone and you'll be fine. It's the kind of thing you can whip up while having The Antiques Roadshow on (yeah, I know, I'm one rocking chair away from Googling for bed jackets and calling people 'Dearie').
I think I should crochet a border around this in some nice, bright colours (this crapifying weather has given me a temporary allergy to the muted and mottled) and I think that little journey will be a blog post for the future. In the meantime, I can use the stalled Brioche Cowl as an opportunity to demonstrate how to wind a ball of yarn from a hank (necessary if you're not going to sacrifice more sanity to the gods of knots and snags) and possibly how to troubleshoot when trying brioche stitch.
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