So far so good

I am enjoying knitting with the Madelinetosh Worsted. The color variations are beautiful. I hope that the one skein that I ordered from WEBS matches what I have; otherwise, I will probably have to knit it at the same time I am knitting from the ones I have to keep the colors blended. I got past the PCO for the hood and now it totally makes sense. I actually think it is really cool, the way the increases (KRL and KLL) make the corner of the hood curve in ever so slightly. The row that I started knitting even looks a little loose, so I am hoping it blocks out. I am pretty happy with the way it's turning out, though and very glad that I modified the stitch counts.

The rest of the pattern looks pretty straight forward. Of the 13 projects for this pattern that I found on Ravelry, none of them mention any mistakes in the pattern. A few mention how PITA the provisional cast on is, though. This part did bother me. Not wanting to use waste yarn, I wound up using the crochet cast on, using nylon crochet thread. Now, this was a Godsend and I wonder why I didn't think to use this before. Waste yarn always gets caught when I knit into the crochet bumps. The nylon thread is PERFECT for the purpose because it is stiff; the bumps are easy to find and knit into them. For this particular project, the stiffness of the crochet chain helped when I had to knit into the provisional cast on. Also, when I pulled on it to unravel, nothing caught. It was like pulling on a zipper - how perfect is that? Add the fact that I can easily reuse the thread and there you go. Favorite PCO implement.

The first KRL increase was a little confusing..."lift up the stitch right under the stitch that you are going to knit into, place on left needle and knit into it..." Huh?? I just found the best stitch that fit the description and continued knitting; same with the KLL. But as I mentioned, as I kept knitting, it became easier to find the correct stitches. And you can't really tell, unless of course, I say anything...