Steeking!

My little dishcloth project has been bound off then steeked. Yaay. It was actually really easy, once I bothered to fully read and comprehend the instructions from Eunny Knits.

Luckily, I used a contrasting purple yarn to crochet the steek stitches up both sides so I could see WTH I was doing.



Then I double checked to make sure I had the little ladder as shown in the instructions from Eunny. I had to undo my stitches at least once because I caught the wrong front loops at one point.

Then it was cutting that ladder!



Resulting in a steeked dischloth! So, now I'm relatively confident I can steek a bigger project with minimal fuss.

The two things I learned in this project:
1) the chart I designed does actually work. I have to tweak certain parts of it, but I feel relatively confident that I can put it on the intended project and have it work well.

2) steeking is relatively easy once you get past the "OMG, I'M GOING TO CUT MY STITCHES" phase of it.

Learning Projects

Since I'm a relatively new knitter, there's a lot of things I don't know how to do yet. What I've found that if I make something that teaches me a new technique, I get a finished product AND learn a new skill at the same time.

This is the reason that I am partial to dishcloths. They are relatively simple, require a relatively cheap form of yarn (cotton), and dischcloths are knit up quickly with minimal effort.

Currently, I am learning to do two different things on my dishcloth:
1) I am "testing" a chart of a design I created. I think it'll work, but it might need a bit of tweaking..

2) Steeking. I've heard a lot about it, and I *like* doing things in the round (I detest miles of purling as I have learned as I am currently knitting a cardigan "flat" and it seems to be taking forever!)

I originally learned of it, by listening to the Stitch It! Podcast when I first starting to knit. I was curious about it, but felt that I should probably learn the basics first. Now, it's time. :-)

So, I cast on the dishcloth in the round with a 3-border stitch using some generic cotton yarn I picked up at Joann's with a coupon. I'm about halfway through the discloth -- which is my sitting at the computer knitting because it's pretty brainless -- and I'm looking forward to steeking it!

I've found a good website on steeking, which I'll be making use of later: Eunny Knits on Steeking.

Oh, and after doing a bunch of Google searches, including a browse through Ravelry's Stitch It Podcast forums, the website is the one most often referred to when it comes to steeking.