I admit that it is entirely my fault for just casting on a bunch of stitches and then starting to knit without making any swatches or measuring anything. If you really do learn from your mistakes, I am on my way to becoming a freakin’ expert on everything.

Because it does get so cold in San Diego in the winter and because I already have a lot of hand-knitted scarves, I decided to knit a scarf. I drew a picture of what I wanted it to look like.

sketch of scarf

I decided to start by knitting the black zig-zag that runs along the bottom part of the image, then fill in the colored parts between the peaks of the zig-zag, and then finally work the top portion of the scarf.

work in progress

Sadly, I had come to discover that my zig-zags are too deep. Part of it is because I did not make a gauge swatch and just guessed how many stitches I was going to use. Part of it is because the angle of the peaks is too narrow.

It is not easy to find any in-depths analysis of chevron knitting on the internet. The most that you get is that you need paired decreases at the bottom points and paired increases at the top points. No one tells you anything about how to adjust the angle.

So now I’m going to need to make swatches, rip out all the progress that I’ve made and then try again. There are some things that I can adjust when making the zig-zags so that the angle is shallower.

  • I can put one decrease on the right side and its paired decrease on the wrong side.
  • I can spread the decreases out even further. Every other row. Every third row.
  • I can still use paired decreases, but put them further away from the point. I worry that this is going to make more of a curve than a point.

We’ll see what happens. Good thing I have plenty of yarn.