I’m so in awe of all you cool people who can knit beautiful color work projects, seriously. Color work is (was?) one of my goals for the year, and I’m trying, but let me tell you, it’s hard. You know that. I know you know that because you had to learn it once upon a time too. I started by holding the yarns in one hand, but that didn’t work, so I tried with the yarns in two hands, and it kind of worked, even if it was slow as molasses, but then my tension was forked up and way too tight so I had to frog four rounds of color work and start over.

That’s when I started shopping for a ring. Have you seen those? The rings you wear on the tip of your index finger to guide your yarn when you’re working with multiple strands? The one I’d seen on instagram was $77 plus $28 in shipping from somewhere international, and friends, I was not that committed to color work. I was just about to buy a simple one on Etsy when I remembered: I used to make jewelry! Not only that, I used to make rings! As luck would have it, I still had some of the heavier wire I used for the wire-wrapped rings, and I set to work. My first prototype was no good, but my second has a lot of potential, and with it I was able to almost-kind of-sort of-quickly do color work!

The corrugated ribbing went great, just a 2/1 pattern. But then I got into the charted paw prints, and as I had longer floats, I discovered the tension on the yarns became harder to control. Whichever yarn I wasn’t using got loose and floppy, and hard to catch when it was its turn again, so I had to fix the tension pretty often. Still, it was doable, I was making better progress than I’d expected, and I was pleased with myself — look at me, doing color work! But Sunday night I stopped and really looked at what I’d knitted so far, and while I can see that it’s okay, it’s not what I’d hoped for. The paw print pattern is awesome but my tension is clearly too tight in places and it’s pulling together. Argh.

While I’d like to think that sh*t will block out, I don’t think that sh*t will block out. SO. Color work is in timeout for now. I just wanted a darn paw print cowl, that’s all! Is that really too much to ask? I *might* frog this and start over with the charted section, catching my floats more often. We’ll see.

And now, having attempted it myself, I am even more in awe of you people knitting your beautiful color work projects. You have mad skills.