In spite of the heat, I have been compelled to try and do a bit of knitting each night. Although I love working on the Leftover Blanket and have enjoyed the hat and socks I’ve made lately, I need to have the next project be more challenging. I decided to work on a pair of mittens. As I searched the colours in my stash, I picked out a nice yellow and orange, but needed to do something else to take it up a notch. I decided to throw in one more colour on the cuff.
As I began to live with the decision to knit with three colours, I soon remembered that it is a major pain to knit with three colours at once. I can easily manage two colours, since I do have two hands, but throw in a third and the result is a tangled mess. With two colours I manage to keep the yarn winding to a minimum and if a twist results, I can just dangle the knitting in the air and it will unwind itself. With three colours I can put one colour in one hand and keep that relatively tangle free, but the other two colours must be picked up and dropped and by the end of the row it is an unmanageable bird’s nest of yarn. My solution is to stop and untangle the yarn after every half row. The result is that 3-colour knitting takes me four times longer than regular knitting and the slow progress is not satisfying.
The end result is still somewhat satisfying, but only enough to have me limit using three colours to very small portions of my project.
I like it. Have you considered adding on a prosthetic arm to cope with the limb deficit? Think outside the box!!
ReplyDeleteI hadn't actually thought of that. I may have to set up a weekly brainstorming session with you since you always think outside of the box!
ReplyDeleteIt might be a bitch, but the end result is lovely. I like the idea of the third arm to hang on to the third colour. You should look into that.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really sure where to get a third arm without a referral from a doctor for a prosthetic. I could try to hold the third yarn with my foot, but I'd need to take up yoga first since I'm not flexible enough to get my foot anywhere near my knitting.
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