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Writer's pictureAurelia Delaney

Year of the Balaclava

To the detriment of some whom I gifted knitwear for Christmas this year, I know naught but freehand. No doubt because I lack patience. When I crochet, I often freehand designs because I know what I’m doing so I neither have to look at someone else’s pattern nor stop to rework a bunch of mistakes. When I knit.. I let fate take me by the hand I guess. I don’t quite have a grasp of that delicated balance of “knowing how the shape of a project will be affected by the stitches you made five rows back” with knitting the same way I do with crochet. Is it a beautiful thing to embrace mistakes or is it just stubborn to refuse to frog?

What went wrong:

  1. Lydia’s scarf (a long, pale yellow micro scarf, duplicate stitched to look like a measuring tape) would have looked nicer if it could lay flat so you could read the measurements stitched on it. I originally started knitting the scarf as a tube, realized I didn’t have enough yarn, took it all out, and worked it flat. And what do we have at the end of the day? A scarf that curls in on itself so you can’t really read what I stitched onto it.

  2. Nate & Cin’s pointer-finger mittens could have benefited from neater increases around the thumb gussette (or as I’ve recently discovered: top-down construction) but suffered more aesthetically from the lack of decreases on the part of the mits for the pinky, ring & middle finger. I just stitched it flat across. Not very hand shaped.

  3. Julia’s ski mask suffered from a poorly planned duplicate stitch grid, resulting in a rather smooshed-looking MF Doom mask decal.

I have resolved to fix one of these mistakes.. just for me. My balaclava needs some matching mittens and I need to use up the rest of my giant ball of white mohair. So I’ll be following the pattern I came up with for Nate’s gloves, using more of the teal angora as an accent, and I’ll be able to correct my finger shaping mistakes.

I’m determined to get more out of this balaclava than I have of the one I made last Christmas for myself. Too bunky.. deeply unflattering.. not goofy in the fun and flirty way I had been hoping for. I found myself discouraged from attempting anothing one all last winter, but the functionality of the balaclava has been calling out for me ever since. I really do love this time of year and the persistent excuse to wear six layers everywhere.

For now, the mittens are on hold and my balaclava must stand alone.

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