Chronicle #16: Knitted Letter Washcloth

Knitted Letter Cloth

Lately I have been working on my stockinette stitch. For some reason I have been having difficulty purling. When I first learned to knit, I actually found the purl stitch easier to do than the knit stitch. But now, I am struggling with it. Perhaps I am holding my needles differently and maybe even wrong. Anyway, I wanted to make a small washcloth with the letter B on it to give to a friend, so I found a neat pattern and got busy. What an adventure and lesson learned! Let me tell you about it.

I found an easy enough pattern for the letter B. The only skills required to make the cloth with the letter B were to be able to cast on, knit, purl, and bind off. That didn’t seem too hard to do. But alas.

So my cast on went just fine. And so too did my first several rows of knitting. As I started to make my way into the pattern, the letter B started to appear. It was really exciting to see it taking shape against the backdrop of the stockinette stitch. Also, I actually was understanding it all.

Then, about halfway through my knitting I started to notice that my letter B was not looking quite right. I also noticed, or it dawned upon me, that I had lost count of what row I was knitting and accidentally skipped some of the rows in the knitting instructions.

I couldn’t quite tell where my error was, so I frogged out all of my work and started over. My avid knitter wife and teacher noticed the commotion but didn’t say anything. We both kept on knitting our projects as we watched a movie together.

So there I was about half way through my knitting, trying to knit this simple letter B washcloth and it happened again. I was giving half of my attention to my knitting and the other half to the movie that I was watching and I had skipped over a row in the instructions.

Fortunately, I could easily back out my mistake and continue on. And this time, I decided to continue my knitting with the aid of a row counter so that I would not have this problem again.

And that was my lesson learned from this adventure. No matter how simple a pattern may seem to be, use a row counter. It will keep you from losing your place in the pattern, especially if you are easily distracted or if you give your attention to other things as you knit. And so I completed my washcloth and was happy with the way it turned out. I thought it looked nice and I hope my friend thinks so too!

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