Try, try, try

By now you probably know I can be a pretty patient person. For instance, I tried and retried (and retried a few more times) to wrap my head around knitting the star stitch in the Holding Hands, Feeding Ducks scarf and picking the right needles. Purling three together, doing a yarn over, and purling three together again (and finally slipping those stitches off the needle) is as daunting in practice as it sounds in theory. I spent a couple hours trying to figure out how to do it. The tight cast on row presented an immediate challenge. Accidentally dropping stitches while doing the star stitch added to the frustration.

Nevertheless, I pressed on, trying various pairs of needles and casting on 21 or 25 stitches over a couple needle sizes up or two needles. I was excited to knit the Misti Alpaca Hand Dyed Worsted yarn, but my consternation with the star stitch and increasing aggravation with the slipperiness of the yarn on my Options needles was really pushing the limits of my patience.

I stopped my attempts after spending the better part of the afternoon in search of something to show for my efforts; however, all that time yielded zero stitches on the needles. I was ready to punt the project and find a different pattern that wasn't going to have me ripping out my hair.

Difficulty with the star stitch was definitely a big part of it, but finding the right needles factored in as well. I tend to get confused when switching needle sizes and yarn gauge as specified in patterns. I know that such things don't particularly matter for a scarf, but I can never remember if going up needle sizes means I'm using more or less yarn. (I think smaller needles means more yarn is being used, which seems kind of counterintuitive to me and is thus the problem.)

I received some good advice from those I asked about the project--luckily a couple of you have made this--so I gave it another go this evening despite my impulse to quit. Having done a fair amount of experimentation, I decided that the best tactic was to cast on 25 stitches with US 11s and knit with US 9s. This meant that the unyielding cast on row had more room for sliding in the needle. It also produced a scarf nearly four inches wide, which should conserve yarn well enough for one skein to give me all I need for the project.

I knit the first few rows slowly. At least they were going faster than my failed afternoon attempts. Gradually I began to find a steady, albeit overly deliberate, pace. On my last couple projects I've been trying to knit more loosely. This scarf is perfect for loose knitting because it's a necessity. I've discovered that I need to bring the stitches to the end of the needle and loosely do the yarn over to make purling three together doable. There's always the risk of bringing the stitches too far to the end of the needle and dropping them, but if I take my time, I'll be fine.

The variegated, hand dyed yarn is a must, not only because it showcases the star stitch to beautiful effect but also because it makes it easier to see if you're pulling the right piece of yarn through on the purls. I've knit enough that qualifies it as a gauge swatch. I'm thrilled with how the scarf-in-progress looks, if not exactly thrilled with how long it's taken me to produce such a small square. I was cursing it for most of today, but now that I have it down pat, I can begrudgingly admit it has been and will be worth the effort.