I tried something new today. I’ve been meaning to have a go at some colourwork for a while. I want to keep trying new things; cables are on my list too. I want to make sure I’m challenging myself with my knitting. At the moment I’ve been avoiding patterns involving these skills because I keep saying to myself “I’ll practice a bit before trying that.” Then I never get round to practicing because it’s more tempting to continue with a project. Tonight I decided I had to learn something! And it was so satisfying! It’s also not so bad halting work on my other projects. They will still be there when I come back.
I think my patch turned out OK. It was quite a faff at first with all the strands of the different coloured yarns! 
I did get into quite a tangle. It did get easier as I went on, because I distanced myself from the tail ends, leaving me with only three strands to deal with rather than six!
The beginning is a bit too tight. It’s difficult to relax when trying to keep track of all the strands! The rows further on are much better though, because I managed to find a good tension. I was quite happy with the end result.
I’ve still to work out how to cast this thing off, but I would call this progress! 🙂 I’ve been wondering if I should make plans in my diary to try something different each week. I’ve not quite decided if that will motivate me because I will want to stick to it, or if I will end up feeling like I’m failing if I’m not keeping to my plan. How do you all keep yourselves learning?
Now, I’m away to cast off, wish me luck!
S.
A Knitting Adventure 
I love cables but I think color work is very hard. I am lucky that I live close enough to a yarn store to take a class once in a while. I find it hard to teach myself. Have fun!
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Oh, living too close to a yarn store would be a little dangerous for me! Haha. I am finding the colourwork quite a challenge, but I am getting somewhere with it so it has been quite satisfying. 🙂
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Looking good. I love knitting cables, and I am also still working on getting my colourwork up to my own approval. But I have started working on it more now. Its such a great technique. Lol. Yes, the yarns are tricky, I get mine tangled up pretty bad. 🙂
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Thanks 🙂 I’m pretty excited about starting on some cables. Got myself some cable needles in preparation.
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I feel sure you will enjoy it just as much as I do. I have accumulated some cable needles over the years. 🙂 You always see pretty new ones and get them, even though you only need a few.
Have fun, I shall look out for your cabled projects. 🙂
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Thanks, I have a long train ride tomorrow, debating whether to take my jumper or try some cables. No doubt you will hear about it whatever I do!
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Looking forward to it. Enjoy the train ride, I always do.
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I too love cables (much easier than colourwork in my opinion!). I am hoping to do a class on colourwork at some point but at the moment if a pattern calls for a little piece of colour then I do duplicate stitch. Apparently yarn bobbins can help with the strands to keep it a bit more under control ☺
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Yeah, think I will have to do something about it. Last night I only had two strands to work with but they intertwined to make one big strand as I went along and was a total nightmare to untangle! I am pretty excited about the cable work! 😀
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Colourwork is on my list of thisngs to try too! Which book is this? It looks like it might be helpful!
H.
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I think it’s called “how to knit step by step” but I will get back to you on that one. I just bought it in one of those discount book stores. It was only like £5 or something and I’ve definitely gotten a good use out of it! I still use YouTube a lot though, but I sometimes struggle with putting the pictures together and the video helps a lot! What would I do without YouTube!?
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That’s some beautiful colorwork! Nice job! 😀
One of the ways that I keep myself motivated to keep learning is I purposefully pick projects that require me to learn a new stitch/method. If I’m super excited about the project anyway, it’s even better because then I can’t put it down, ha ha! 🙂
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That’s a good idea. I might go for it, because I get the same way over projects. I just get so excited! Haha. With the colourwork, I suppose I did feel like I had to read my book since colourwork patterns are a bit different to anything I’ve read. I think I like the visual element though. Sometimes I have to write out a row from a normal pattern with every stitch written down to keep me on track. With the colourwork, it’s all there!
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Colour work is definitely on my list of things to learn but who knows when I’ll actually get round to that. I’ve let my knitting skills stagnate a little. I have so many other crafts I’m interested in as well that it’s hard to find the time to improve my knitting. When I go to knit, I just knit really simple things like scarves and dishcloths because I just want something to do with my hands while I watch tv and I don’t want something that I have to concentrate really hard on.
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Yeah, I got quite motivated last week because I realised that I just wasn’t getting round to learning new things and actually improving. It is really hard to find the time though. Especially when you have a fairly easy project you can just pick up while you watch TV, too tempting!
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I like color work, but I love cables. I try to put them on everything. As for binding off your sample, you can always run a row of a single color and then bind off as normal. I’ve never tried binding off in pattern, though; so if you figure that out, I want to know.
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Yeah, in the end I just cast off in the same way as normal but using both strands together. I just made that up though. Haha
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It works! 🙂
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