Dear Kay,

I really had a swell time making Isabell Kraemer’s wrap, A Girl’s Best Friend. It was not hard, not boring, not slow, not annoying. It was the opposite of all these: easy, interesting, fast, and beautifully designed.

Knit up in Backyard Fiber Works Sock.

Things I Noticed Along the Way

Stitch markers. Sometimes stitch markers are not essential. Here, they were a welcome set of guideposts—wouldn’t have kept that center spine with its pair of yarnovers going without the markers reminding me. And that 3-stitch edge with its yarnover.

The teardrop stitch. This is the challenge portion of your workout. To get the adorable little open mouth in the middle of the teardrop, you knit 5 into 1 stitch. Which means you’re turning a normal row into a giant row every once in a while, then decreasing it back to normal. It’s not a bobble. But it’s a cousin.

Those skinny 2-row stripes. I love these. But I worried as I added them that I’d have trouble weaving in the ends without it being lumpen or otherwise unlovely.

At the moment of weaving in the ends, I put both ends of the yarn onto one needle and wove the two ends in as if they were one. It is a little bulky, but it’s better to my eye than weaving each end in separately.

The bobbles. This is a single row where Isabell clearly just thought, sure, why not: we’re doing bobbles now. I will say that it is not hard to do a bobble. But sometimes it’s a little too easy to overbobble and knit an extra row that turns a normal bobble into a superbobble.

A perfect little tutorial in bobbling comes from Ysolda, whose “How to Knit a Bobble” is so satisfying. Thanks, Ysolda!

The ends. I wove in the ends before blocking this—I left about an inch poking out to trim after blocking was finished. It just seemed like this superwash merino would hold onto the ends better after blocking. So far, so good.

If we had a Michelin Guide for knitting patterns, this would be a definite “*** Worth a Detour.”

Love,

Ann