A good tool can make a job easy and fast. My advice is, buy the best tool for the project you can afford.
I have always paid very close attention to tools. My dear mother used to tell me (in her Hungarian accent) "You always tool up elegantly.” By this she meant that when I had a task to do I always tried to collect the best tools for that job. As the saying goes "You are as good as your tools."
Not everybody agrees with me, but no one has ever been able to convince me otherwise. I love to work with my hands and no matter what I am making, the right tool can make the difference between a fun, easy, pleasurable task or a miserable task.
Can you guess what this is?
It's my row counter for my knitting projects. It's simply a piece of string with stitch markers tied on to it. Making sure that the last one is different. In the picture above the last row which is the 10th row is green so I know I need to do something every ten rows.
I have several options, there is one that fits on my finger like a ring. This option is good because it keeps the counter on my hand so I don't forget, but somehow I still miss some rows. The red, cylindrical counter with the loop is good because it's on the needle and I have to touch it to move it, but I need both hands to turn the little wheel and that can be awkward for me. Oh yes there is always the paper and pen option but I usually either misplace the paper or the pen. My simple string row counter is always attached and always on the correct row.
This simple piece of string and some stitch markers works the best for me, especially when I'm knitting a sweater with sleeves and I would like the sleeves to match!
The way it works is this:
I am knitting a sleeve in the round on this top down sweater. I want both sleeves to match exactly. (A novel idea, sometimes difficult to achieve.) I use the loops as stitch markers to mark the beginning of my rounds. When I complete a round I transfer the loop to the next one and when I reach the green one I know I've knit ten rounds and I need to decrease.
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| Row Counter in action. |
Here is another version I made that is even simpler, just a string and knots with a marker at the end. This one is a five row repeat I needed and did not have spare stitch markers. Easy Peasy.
