Oh Henry!

A perfect knitting storm occurred this week -- the fall issue of Knitty came out and I went on my maiden visit to The Knitting Nest. Purchases were made, money was spent, and soon I'd forgotten all about sewing up the sweater -- I needed to get started on Henry. I hadn't made a scarf in a while, and something about this knitted-but-almost-woven pattern made me want try.

I had issues from the start. First of all, I didn't have a size 3 circular that was long enough. I picked up a 40" Bryspun at Stacy's shop, but I have to say it's driving me nuts. It's too bendy, and I grab the needles to tightly. I'm seriously worried I'm going to snap it. Plus, I don't know if it's the content of the Silky Wool yarn I'm using (35% Silky, 65% Woolly), but there's a whole lot of squeeking going on while I knit, which is weirding me out.

I also had to cast on and start over three or four times. The designer writes in the instructions that the knitter should "check your work often to be sure the stitch pattern is lining up correctly," and boy, she ain't kiddin'. You cast on 227 stitches, but then the first row consists of K1, YO, K1, YO... already up to 450+ stitches. For the first few rows, it's hard to see the slipped traveling stitch lining up. The further I've gotten into it, the better I've been able to catch my mistakes early.

One of the neat things about this is that there is some sort of magic cast on with waste yarn that can later be removed. There's a lot stitch slipping going on in the first three rows, but I'm not sure how it all gets locked. Can anyone explain this to me/ You can see that I've just started unraveling the waste yarn in the picture at the top of the post. Undoing the cast-on edge was freakier than cutting a steek to me. I won't breathe easily until I've been down the whole row and know that none of those little edge stitches are going to explode.