I Heart Cozy
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This weekend, I had an itch. An itch to get something big on my needles. I looked at my list of holiday items, and said to myself, “SpaceCase, those gift scarves need to get done, that’s a fact. But look at all of this Reynolds Mandalay you wound last week. It’s so pretty and tweedy. And that Cozy pattern is just being all patient, way down there at the bottom of the list. Why not just do a pattern repeat and see what you think of it? Just give it a try!”
That is the siren song of the Cozy pattern. Because now I want to knit nothing else. I love it.
The first time I tried it on Friday night it was a disaster. The pattern is simple – basic repeats every six stitches every other row for 8 rows. But my pea brain could not keep count over 85 stitches. I would finish a pattern row, go back and purl across the wrong side, start another pattern row and end up with the wrong number of stitches. I couldn’t figure out where I went wrong. It was a great big mess.
Then I had an inspired thought. “SpaceCase,” I said, “that’s why the knitting geniuses created stitch markers.”
I frogged and started over. This time, I slipped on a pattern marker after every 6-stitch repeat. Genius! Then, on wonky row 8, where I the final K2tog bridged the pattern markers, I just slipped the stitch before the marker, took the marker off, slipped the stitch back to the left needle, k2tog, and put the marker back, because magically that’s where it belonged. Easy.
Now, it’s much easier to keep tabs on the pattern repeats. I just make sure I have six stitches between the markers. Every once in a while, I mess up and don’t realize it until the next pattern row, but at least I know exactly which section is goofy, without effecting the entire row. I can fudge a little, and stay on track.
Plus, it’s really really pretty. Which you could see for yourselves if I, you know, took a picture of it. Whoops.
I ended up knitting my way through the first of 8 skeins in no time flat (for me, a slow newbie knitter). I’m bringing it with me on my road trip this weekend, and hope to get at least another skein or two knitted up.
The gift scarves? Well, there’s always Valentine’s Day, right?
