Brioche fail

I had another knitter who wanted to talk brioche knitting, so I had to brush up on my skills. I found a beautiful variegated yarn and decided to work from the inside and the outside of the skein, which was stunning done in the two-color brioche ribbing.

Photo description: beginning brioche knitting with variegated yarn, orange leg out on the calico cat on my lap

The color shifts are stunning, but the mistakes in the knit were not. I have a 10 second rule: if a casual observer can’t see the mistake in 10 seconds don’t fix it. My mistakes added up and overwhelmed the rule.

Photo description: brioche knitting with numerous errors, a jag around row 8, misaligned yarn overs, and somehow loosing two columns, laying on a dilute calico cat

The yarn I’m working with is delicate, ripping out the knitting would have made the yarn unusable. Continuing on with all the mistakes was unthinkable, so I bound off and am going to try again.

And yes, those are pictures of two different cats on my lap. I have become a battle ground in cat chess.

Finished: 10 second rule

I stopped knitting and bound off my rainbow brioche scarf months ago, but there were errors at the beginning when I was still getting used to the brioche knitting with multiple colors techniques. I thought I needed to rip out the first few inches and rebind, which is daunting, so I stuck the project in a bag and tucked it into the back of the closet until I was ready.

Months later, when I was on a finishing kick (see yesterday’s post), I figured I was ready to work on the scarf again. I pulled it out of the bag, in all its squishy soft amazing length, and couldn’t find the spots that bothered me before. I looked again and did eventually spot the small errors, but it definitely took over 10 seconds. I have a 10 second rule, that if you can’t see the mistake in 10 seconds, the item passes. If someone else wants to examine an item that closely, they deserve to find something.

I wet the scarf to block it, and noticed that the colors bled.

Photo description: rainbow scarf in blue tinted water in the sink

I rinsed the scarf until I could not see any dye in the water, and hung it up to dry.

Photo description: rainbow brioche scarf hanging from multiple towel racks

The dye colors were taken up by the white yarn as the scarf dried, but it doesn’t distract from the piece. I’m glad I didn’t add fluffy clouds to the ends, they would not have stayed white.

Photo description: finished scarf laying artfully on a leather chair

The scarf now has a happy home, two years after I started it.