Stained Glass Cowl KAL – September 1

September 1 and the beginning of the Stained Glass Cowl Knit Along is fast approaching. Tomorrow I will do a post with a link box for adding links to your yarn choices.

Denise has an excellent post that you should read but then, you should read all her posts every day! Seriously, Denise is a much better knitter, quilter, person (except when I short sheeted her bed and she didn’t even notice!) than I am so she will be our go to person with help or questions.

Also, Sandie, a blog reader, sent me this very helpful e-mail.

Just thought I would share a trick for joining insanely large numbers of stitches for knitting in the round as we will be doing in the KAL. I had never done a provisional cast on or color work and I had a feeling I was going to have some trouble, so I cast on last week with some practice yarn. I used the crochet chain method and tried to be careful and thought I had joined without twisting, but after stitching 4 rows, I could see I had messed up and was knitting a möbius. Did that three times before out of desperation I called my LYS and got Kathy’s advice. Instead of joining in the round at the start, use waste yarn, and a provisional cast on and knit 5 or 6 rows flat to give your knitting the weight and length it needs to hang from the cord instead of twisting around it.  Then join in the round with no fear of twisting! Saved me from tears and giving up, and may be of help to some others too. Also used a Norwegian knitting thimble and a clover yarn guide to make the color work less likely to tangle. Both do the same thing but are styled a little differently. After I found a comfortable way to get my tension right they made it very nice to do the color work.

I have had occasions when I knitted a few rows before joining in the round. You can use the tail to go back and tack them together and it will never show. I haven’t tried it with provisional cast on but I know it has to be easier than trying to get 500+ stitches joined in the round without a twist in them.

On this pattern, if my quick review is correct, you only have one round of knit stitches before the color work begins so any additional knit rows will look a bit different from the pattern. If I were to knit a couple of additional rows using the main color before getting into the colorwork, I would again knit those additional rows above and below the turning round, and again at the end. I don’t think that will make a difference in the appearance and I believe adding the additional solid knit rows will keep it balanced . . that’s up to you if you want to try it. 

If anyone sees anything grossly wrong with my thinking, please post in the comments and I’ll revise this post so no one follows my advice and screws up right off the bat.

Watch for the post tomorrow and link up with your yarn choices. This will give Denise and me an idea of how many participants we’re going to have.