So my little hat refuses to come into being. I’ve been working hard at my first cabling project, a little hat in the “coronet” pattern from knitty. It looks straightforward, so I thought I would give it a shot.

Having ripped the band once and started over, I still believe it is straightforward. Or at least, that it should be. But I’m having wacky issues with the edge of my knitting. The cabling itself is no problem, but my “selvedges,” if you can even call them that are really loopy. I actually mean loopy in the literal sense — It looks like I’m getting an extra little loop or knot in there every time, which means that trying to fix an error by just chaining up the edge (which I learned how to do from this excellent tutorial by techknitting)results every time in something that looks like a slipped stitch at the base of the area I tried to correct. I’ll add photos, but for now I’m just venting.

I’m working the first and last stiches of every row — so knittng them one row, and purling them the next. I didn’t add any stitches or slip anything, because I’ve never done a pattern where I have to pick up stitches; and since the pattern calls for picking up a stich every three rows once the band is done, I was afraid that the slipped selvedge would throw me off when it came time to pick stuff up.

I’m willing to rip it out again, but not until I know what I’m doing wrong and how to fix it. So I’m off to Gauge tonight to buy needles for another project, and to beg and plead them to take a look.

WAH.