The Start

As soon as the yarn arrived I abandoned the "swatch" and decided to "Just start, Kate!" (as my stitching teacher was always saying whilst I procrastinated and dithered and read a bit more about it.)

Emily Ocker's circular start has never come out so well:



Much better than the beginning of Rosy Fingered Dawn - skinnier yarn, of course, so maybe that explains it. The other possibility is that I am becoming more adept.

I decided on 2.5mm needles in the end, since I thought the 2.25mms were just a tad too small. For some unknown reason I don't seem to have any 2.5 dpns - I have no idea how that comes about since I am absolutely sure that I have every size of dpn known to the knitting world. I had to fall back on the two circular method, admirably explained there, with pictures, too.

Here's a not terribly good picture of the beginning, note the red crochet cotton markers:



It was all a bit of a fiddle at this stage - the red markers for the different sections, the pink marker for end of round, the two circular needles flapping about all over the place. One of the needles was the new Addi Turbo, the other some random needle. It made me realise just how good Addis are - smooth join, non-kinking cable, just the right amount of "pointyness" (technical term) - an absolute joy to knit with.

I wanted to get the thing big enough to use just the Addi, but it seemed to be taking quite a long time. I decided to take the almost unprecedented step of using the "Magic Loop" method. I have done it before but didn't really take to it. However, the need to rid myself of the non-Addi needle overcame my reluctance.

So here I am pulling out the loop of cable at the half-way point:



The stitches are not normally stretched so much because I am usually squeezing the loop together but what with holding the camera, holding the knitting down, and the fact that the spare hand which normally pops up out of the top of my head is unaccountably broken today...

So you pull the loop out and then I usually cross the cable to stop stretching of the stitches:



and that's it. We are ready to roll:



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