Duplicate duplicate stitch stitch

That's what's been consuming my life.

Having finished and seamed together the big panels of Burridge Lake, I realized that, hey, I still have a bit of time left for this one. I also realized that, hey, my best friend's birthday is coming up, at right around the same time as it happened last year (funny how that works, right?). And I still hadn't finished her teddy bear that I started last year at around this time.

Bad, bad Dove.

So I dug up the pieces of the teddy bear's pajamas, and saw that I actually finished knitting both the top and the bottom to the PJs, except the little pockets. So I seamed them up and started on the duplicate stitch on the pants -- they're plaid PJs, see.

And I spent days on this. Each stripe would take me about 30 minutes to do. But I finally did them all. Only to realize I wasn't happy with them, at all.

So I ripped one stripe out, and tried crocheting a line instead, poking the hook down into the underside of the fabric to bring up the yarn and pass it through the loop. Muuuch better! Slimmer, neater, quicker lines.



The bottom stripe is duplicate; the top two are crocheted. Big difference, right?

So now I'm busy ripping alllll those stripes out. Every. Single. One. Because even though I'm not at all a perfectionist, I just couldn't live with this thing.

Fortunately, the crocheting goes aloooot faster.

I still have to knit the fronts of the robe. And then all those ends to weave it.