falling in love with short rows

For a long time, I've successfully managed to avoid short rows. If they were in a pattern, I clung tightly to that pattern and hated how they looked. I understood the principle of the short rows and had used them in freeform crochet without problems, but in knitting, I didn't really know what to do with them.

Looking for a way to make short rows look nicer, I read about Japanese short rows done with pins, but found that to be kind of material intensive, a big minus for me, since I like to knit with as few accessories as possible. Using accessories like cable needles, pins or stitch markers, and doing things like knitting stuff in pieces and seaming them up later takes a lot longer than making stitch markers out of left-over yarn on the fly, cabling without cable needles and knitting seamlessly whenever possible.

Still, I wanted to learn how to deal with short rows since I hated being afraid of them. With all this baby knitting, I found the perfect opportunity to get over my fears: the Aviatrix baby hat by Justine Turner. I love the look of it and just had to make it for my friend's baby. But how? How could I get over the short rows?

Solution: the internets. TECHknitting is an excellent blog with lots of how-tos, tricks and tips and really clear explanations and pictures and there I came across the method that cured me. At the end of this article on short row methods is my new method of choice: Japanese short rows done with yarnovers and slipped stitches, no pins, no wraps, just knitting. Once you get used to slipping the first stitch, everything becomes a cinch!

Now I can proudly present my two Aviatrix baby hats. The first one was modded a little, according to the instructions of a fellow Raveler, but with the second one, I stuck to the pattern. Funnily, the hats turned out roughly the same size. I just hope the straps aren't too short or too long. They were both made using Lana Grossa Superlana, which is rougher and not as tightly plied as the Cool Wool 2000, but soft and durable all the same (also, cheaper and the right weight for these hats).

Yes, I had gotten over my short row anxiety. Now how to put the new knowledge into practice? Why, by modifying a pattern, of course! Enter my love of pixie caps. I bought the first Knitty book only because there was a pixie cap in it. It turned out to be not very cute, even though I travelled to the US to get the exact yarn specified (ok, there were other reasons for travelling there, as well). But if I can't wear them, I know who can - babies.

 
Yes, babies can wear pixie caps. And I found the perfect pattern: the Vintage Pixie Cap by Hadley Fierlinger. To make the pointy end more pointy, stitches are bound off at the beginning of rows, which always leads to ugly stepped edges and ugly seams. I used Japanese short rows and could do a comfortable three-needle-bind off in the end, saving myself from having to do a seam. Jubilation! I used Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 yet again, since it's superwash, supersoft and superdurable.

The last baby hat I knit doesn't have short rows. But the Norwegian Sweet Baby Hat by Gro is cute all the same. I picked up a ball of dark blue-green Lana Grossa Cool Wool 2000 (what else, by now), but when the time came to cast on, I was a little split. It's lovely yarn, slightly heathered, but the color was maybe somewhat austere for a baby that wasn't mine. After much wrangling with how many stitches to cast on (gosh, is it ever hard to settle on a size when there aren't any babies around you that you can test things on), I decided to add a little more color.

I had recently finished a headband for my mother (no picture yet), because the first one I made for her got stolen. Looking at the leftovers, I discovered that the color suited my dark green-blue perfectly - and since the pattern called for stripes, I put the yarns together and got something much more beautiful than if I had used either yarn on its own.

In fact, I love this color combination so much that I'm going to make myself some fingerless gloves with the same yarn and a zigzag pattern. At first I thought about making the same baby hat and saving it for my own future babies (yes, I am a little crazy), but in this case, rational thought (and selfishness) won.

So that's it on baby hats. I have a few more baby items in my queue, but my baby knitting elan is petering out. After all, I have to weave in all the ends on all the things I already made, there are seams to sew, there's blocking and finally sending everything off. In the meantime I'll be working on the 200th project I recorded on Ravelry - and it will benefit heavily from my short row craze.