It’s another beautiful day at the lake. I have to admit to having headed up to my atelier before I took a photo this morning so this is one from yesterday. We’ve had a lot of hummingbird activity this week and the little needle-nosed darlings are creating quite a stir at the feeder. They must be fueling up for their big flight south. I have grown to really, intensely, dislike when they leave. I miss the sounds of their wings and their tiny squawks that we barely notice when they’re here. And, of course, it means the beginning of the end of the porch-sitting weather when mornings get cooler or cold and we begin to move inside again.

This week’s knitting has been a lot of fun because I have three projects that I’m focused on and they’re all ones that I am enjoying! This morning, though, I’m going to talk about one in particular and a mistake that I made yesterday. I try to share my mistakes for two reasons: one, because even “expert” knitters make them all the time and two, so that other knitters may not make the same ones!

I’m working on the pullover called Make Mine a Double by Tribe Yarns. This pattern was made specifically for this yarn – Artyarns Double Mohair Ombre – and it caught my eye on Instagram when Millie wore it on one of her weekly videos. I was attracted to the bright colors and she looked really great. As you’ve heard here before, I loved it so much but I thought that I could find a yarn in the LYS where I work that would work just as well. I looked around the store when I was next there and didn’t find what I thought would even be close to what Millie was wearing. So, a week or more later, I announced to my hubby that i was going to pay an obscene amount for two hanks of yarn to make this sweater and I pushed the ApplePay button to confirm my purchase. The original color had been sold out and I bought a color that I thought was different for me but one that i could wear with jeans or skirts or whatever. This is my color.

In the photo above, I haven’t quite made it to the peachy-creamy color but it’s coming. I promise. I have, however, reached the point that I am going to separate the sleeves from the body. Or so I thought. Yesterday afternoon in my class, while my students were knitting away, I began the separation …. and ran into a problem … not enough stitches.

I swore that I had counted the stitches and had the right number before I put the knitting down the night before. Ha! Silly me. I had done that BUT I had missed a row of increases, the final increase row, that would have given me the right number of stitches to do what I wanted to do.

If any of you have knitted with silk mohair you know that it’s not easy to frog. Those little fuzzy bits that keep you warm despite being open and airy are also nasty grabby little bits that make going backwards very frustrating (and messy). But I had no choice other than to go back a round and a half in order to move forward.

Ta! Da! Success! I have divided the sleeves (One on the purple cord and one on the green cord and now will continue to knit down the body of the sweater until I am happy with the length. Millie wears her Make Mine a Double cropped. I will likely wear it a little bit cropped. BUT it needs to cover my belly even when I will be wearing it over a tank or tee. I am loving the colors and looking forward to getting to the place where the colors change again … this is one of the things that keep me knitting on this project … watching the colors change! Eventually the sweater becomes the creamy-peachy color which will be interesting. I almost wish that I’d started with the lighter color near my face but it’s too late for that now. I have a lot of yarn left in the first hank/skein/cake and a second one in the wings. I imagine that I’ll use the second one for the sleeves primarily. So I can probably cake it up and use some of the darker colors if the bright light bottom doesn’t suit me. (I’m also considering making the sleeves bell-shaped at the end.)

So, there you have it! My mistakes shared. The biggest one may be that I have decided to make the medium size rather than the large because I don’t like to have 10+ inches of ease in my sweaters. I hope that works out the way I hope. Time will tell.

Gone knitting.