Finished

I wanted to show you this project last month but it was a gift.

I signed up for Ysolda Teague's Knitworthy club again and this was the first pattern. Knitworthy is her fun late fall/early winter set of snack-sized patterns, suitable for December gift-giving. Or October gift-giving, if that's what you need.

One of the things I especially like about Ysolda's patterns is the inclusion of techniques that are interesting and useful and uncommon, things that make me say, "I would never have thought of that!" This pattern introduced me to a helpful new technique for carrying long floats. 

When you're working with two colors, you don't want to carry the unused color for more than five stitches. It's hard to keep your tension even when the floats get that long, and it creates a wrong-side fabric that's less likely to lie smooth. But if you'd like a virtually invisible technique for hiding long floats, the ladderback jacquard technique might be what you've been looking for. 

The way it works is that in the middle of your long stretch of stitches, you cast on a new stitch with your unused color. When you work your way back around to that stitch, you bring both yarns to the front and purl it. When you don't need it any longer, you work it together with an adjacent stitch. A purled stitch column in between two knit columns will retreat into the background, making the extra stitch virtually invisible. It requires a little more effort than just catching the float, but I think it looks better because the contrasting yarn is less likely to peek through the fabric. Here's the wrong side of the fabric.

Those columns of knit stitches are spots where the pattern told me to use the ladderback jacquard technique. They're undetectable from the right side. Nifty, right?

This project involved the diciest game of yarn chicken I've ever played. I had to switch back to the contrast color for the last round of the crown, because I ran out of yarn about six stitches from the end. But I'm guessing you wouldn't have noticed if I hadn't drawn your attention to it. 

It was a 25th birthday gift for Marie, who tells me it will get plenty of wear this winter.