Learning by Doing

That's what we call it here in the homeschooling world when a person runs headlong into a brick wall tries something out to see if it works. It can be something such as learning to flip a skateboard and land on it, or divide a big number by a smaller one, or, say, make a scarf with a cable.

This is my Desert Island yarn.
That is, if someone said, "You can only knit with one yarn from now on," after I came out of my swoon, I'd say: "Araucania Nature Wool, please." (After that, I'd weep.)

I've been trying to get my International Scarf Exchange 3 pal's scarf done on time, but in order to do that, this lovely yarn must have a pattern to go with it. Being a Good Knitter, that is, a well-behaved, rather than an overly talented knitter, I swatched.


And by doing that I learned that a) I love twisted stitch patterns as much as I thought I would (go look at that overly talented knitter I mentioned), and b) they don't work so well on variegated yarn. Next try? Loose 24-stitch cables. On the swatch, I liked them. On the actual scarf, not so much. I have Barbara Walker's Charted Knitting Designs open and am perusing a different cable, a more traditional cable, in hopes that we'll finally get somewhere.

I really want to get this done. The cotton wrap is half-fixed, in that the yarn over is back where it belongs but in some way I twisted some of the loose strands. I'm going to try to drop only a bit of the stitches, rather than all of them. At worst, it'll be tink city. Of course, we still have to figure out what to have for lunch, accomplish some sort of learning, have fun with each other, get the baby to sleep, and wipe the kitchen counters. Brick walls? Comin' right at ya.