"And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look
Behind from where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game"
-- Joni Mitchell
Joni's right, in that, "We can't return we can only look behind from where we came " -- but as life often takes us in a circle, I re-visited a project I completed 25+ years ago when I was learning to knit. It was a fabulous project then. And guess what, even better the next time around. I learned more, it went faster, waaaay faster than in the '80s.
The Sweater Workshop Sampler by Jacqueline Fee
I knit this sampler to try and motivate members of the
Snohomish Knitters Guild to adopt the concept of making a sampler, growing skills, and having a reference for future design efforts. In the process, I completely enjoyed revisiting all the folksy instructions by Jacqueline. The sampler took little more time than a hat.
A few modifications that I made:
1. I knit on two circular needles so I only needed to knit 64 stitches. It makes for a small sampler, but you never spend very long on any one section.
2. At the cast off sections at the top (Icord and lace cast offs), I followed instructions for the first 1/2, then for the last half, I knit through the back loop rather than front in the cast off. The difference is marked! Through the back loop for future when casting off in Icord or lace. The look is so much neater.
Specs:
Size 6 US needle; Cascade 220 yarn; I purchased paper tags, wrote the instructions for each section and tied it to the section so I could refer to the sampler and know what I did (not illustrated in the above photos.)
Takeaway: I'm going to always have a circular sampler going to try new ideas out on. This was a fun project, highly recommended!
