"It takes balls to knit" - Steve Malcom
(Keep Calm and Cast On - Good Advice for Knitters)
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| Rainbow Phone Cosy Photography by Zoë Bull Pattern from Cute & Easy Knits (Fiona Gable) |
It's taken two months to complete my latest knitting project.
I have been knitting recently from Cute and Easy Knitting by Fiona Gable, a book a received from a friend last Christmas.
It is ironic really, a book with such a name can present a difficult knit right near the beginning. I'm not selling this to you well, am I? But it is actually a great book! I made my green ladybird mug cosy from here and I had always wanted to create a mug cosy. The next move was to create a phone cosy.
Once I got into the swing of things, I could agree that the pattern was quite easy, and it is often by experience that harder tasks can begin to ease from we grow in confidence. For example, I found myself on the second half of the pattern barely using the book at all. The hardest element I had found was the cable stitch down the centre of both halves.
The green mug cosy had more of a traditional cable stitch but this one is slightly different. There is a lot of ribbing going on within the creation of the cable stitch as well as a pesky tehcnique called p1tbl. Now, what on earth does that mean? I could be talking about Algebra.
Well, the abbreviations are always at the front of knitting books but I had to look this one up nonetheless.
P1 ~ Purl (simples!)
tbl ~ ? Huh?
It simply means Purl 1 Through the Back Loop.
Since February, at least I have been knitting this phone cosy and restarted several times simply because I got this stitch incorrect; and it makes all the difference.
I found this fantastic video which simply set me right and I could eventually knitting the phone cosy I had been dreaming of. I hope it helps any level of knitter get the hang of this stitch, and according to the video, 'this isn't a stitch used often', so there is no need to panic too much
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GIpzQRn37o
- Knitting Help: Purl Through The Back Loop by Very Pink Knits
So in pictures, here is how I got on:
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| Referring to the book |
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| Starting off... |
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| Both sides complete! |
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| Stitching together |
