Yesterday I turned on the tennis and settled in with my Boxy fade sweater. I was ready both to split for the sleeves and to start fading in the last color. I knit across the stitches for the front half and hit a roadblock: I needed one row per color, but there wasn’t an easy way to do that when you’re knitting back and forth with two colors of yarn. It works perfectly when you’re going round and round, but I didn’t even think about how it would have to switch to back & forth later. So, I was in a pickle. Now, I’m sure there are smarter knitters than I who have a good answer, but my answer seems to be working for me: I knit one color across, then I knit the other color across. Then I purl color one across, then purl color two across. Whatever works, right?
My second issue is one of color. When I chose my five colors for this fade, I alternated variegated with solid. The first solid was at the bottom and it’s fine. But then I have the second solid up here, separated by variegated/fades, and it’s just this stripe of lavender. I can’t decide if it stands out a lot because I’m looking for it, or because it’s obvious.
Maybe it will calm down once I get the rest done. I sure hope so because I am NOT interested in frogging 22 miles of stockinette just to switch the order of the last two colors.
And that’s as far as I got yesterday, because of Issue #3: my elbow. I had a bad case of tendinitis several years ago, and every so often it’ll flare up a bit if I’m not careful. Apparently I’ve been doing a lot of knitting during Duncan’s recovery, and they’re longer stretches of knitting, and now I’ve got this pain in my elbow that says “Hey! Time to take a break!” So instead I caught up on some TV and read a book, like a real book with pages and stuff, and that was nice. I’ll give it a couple more days with limited knitting and all should be fine. Maybe switching to my worsted weight cowl will help too, since I hold the bigger needles more loosely than the smaller ones I use for fingering weight. And really, it will work out all right because I’m getting my purple hair refreshed today, so that’ll be about five hours with little to no knitting time!
Enjoy your Sunday, friends!
bonnyknits 
It’s looking great!
Your solution to the color change problem is better than mine! I came up against the exact same issue this morning. I tried adding in the outsides of the yarn cakes so I could have one color going each direction, but that ended up forcing me into a slightly different fade pattern and just made kind of a mess lol
That would have seemed like a reasonable solution to me too–I’m glad you tested it for me! lol
I hope your elbow recovers quickly and you can get back to knitting.
I think the Boxy looks great, but I also know how I’m a lot more picky with how I want my projects to look. It’s always frustrating when the actual knitted item doesn’t match the picture in my head.
I hope your tendinitis calms down soon!
It’s funny, because I’m a perfectionist in real life, but in knitting, I’m a lot more forgiving!
I’m the same!