MKAL – Hopefully Creative

Believe: An MKAL the Lasso Way

Another mystery knit, now in shades of blue.

I must preface this by saying that I haven’t watched a full episode of Ted Lasso, so most of the jokes in the pattern went entirely over my head. Still, the experience of participating in Believe: An MKAL the Lasso Way by Mary Annarella was a lot of fun.

Three skeins of yarn in shades of blue and one in yellow — Clue 1

It required 4 skeins of yarn, one needed to be high contrast with all the others but those three didn’t need high contrast between them. I settled on dyeing them in three shades of blue and one bright yellow. The blues are a combination of Aqua Tropic as a base with either Teal or Turquoise added. For the yellow, I had to dye a second skein because the first one ended up too orange.

Unfortunately, the main knitting method for this scarf was extremely similar to the other Mystery Knit Along that I was participating in at practically the same time: Funfetti MKAL. However, this one had opposite increases and decreases from Funfetti so I had to pay close attention to which one I was working on. What was fun was that these sections were much more manageable and different. There are some repeat stitch patterns but all in all that went very well.

Two parts of a scarf in three shades of blue and one of yellow. — Clue 5

Since there are many colours here too, there were a lot of ends to weave in. The forums quickly shared a good method for weaving as you go. So that made it all a lot less annoying. Once there were two equal parts of the scarf, we knit points. Those two sections were then three needle bind-offed together to get a nice diagonal stripe across.

Backside of a scarf in three shades of blue and one of yellow. — Backside

Scarf in three shades of blue and one of yellow being blocked — Backside

I like this scarf. The colours are nice and it’s very long so I can wrap it und my neck twice and still have length leftover. This was very unexpected as I was not on gauge and expected the thing to turn out much smaller. The yarn is decent enough, but it isn’t as warm and cosy as the alpaca sock yarn that I tend to want to use. It has already seen the outside world and I expect that it will do that more often when the weather calls for it.

Funfetti Mystery Knit

Knitting a mystery rainbow scarf.

January 29 was the start of my next Mystery Knit Along (MKAL), this one was
Funfetti MKAL by : : : Katie Degroff Knits : : :. It called for 200 grams ish of fingering weight yarn, and then 200 grams ish of two or six or twelve contrast colours. I opted to split two skeins of Alpaca 4 ply into three, so I wound up with six colours. Since I just purchased new yarn dye in almost a rainbow, I figured that would be a great way to test those too.

2 large purple skeins and 6 mini skeins in a rainbow. — Yarns

2 large purple balls of yarn and 6 mini balls in a rainbow. — Yarns

The main colour was then a combination of violet and periwinkle. The contrasts were A: Neon Red, B: Neon Orange, C: Neon Yellow, D: Blacklight Blue, E: Aqua Tropic and F: Crocodile Green. Most of the colours work well together although the Crocodile Green does feel like the odd one out. Out of my new dyes, Croc Green, Aqua and Neon Yellow are my favourites.

When it came to knitting, it was a lot per installment. The construction was interesting. We started with a diamond shape with rounds in the different colours. Then we put that one aside and started working on a section where you increase in the middle but eventually start decreasing on the ends, so you end up with a ‘house’ shape. We did that for a few of the clues before going back to clue one and starting to add to that one too.

The final clue was to fill in two rectangles to connect the two sections we had been working on. This was quite satisfying because it was the last clue and a much smaller number of stitches. I was debating whether to do the colour changes at the end because it would leave so many ends, and while I decided to go for it, I opted out of the last colour and only did five colours. I think this worked fine.

The end result is a long rectangular scarf, with one of the short ends straight and the other side pointed. Since there are so many colour changes, weaving in the ends was a project in and of itself. It really is quite big. I don’t think I should opt for 400 gram scarves in the future. This one will end up being gifted away since I’m not enjoying the purple colour for anything I would wear.

Still, the MKAL was well organized. The forums were fun and the designer was very helpful. I just chose colours that I didn’t like even though the yarn I used was great.

Tales of the Tundra

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif.

While deciding what to do over the winter break, I was browsing Ravelry to see if there was a fun Mystery Knit along. As we’ve discovered, I like mystery anything-alongs and knitting fits in too. The last mystery knit along that I participated in is still not done, the clues had too many stitches to keep up with in the last three sections, so it’s now a travel project. But that wouldn’t hold me back.

There’s a forum called Upcoming MKAL/MCAL Calendar that lists MKALs that are going to start. There I found Tales of the Tundra Cowl (Knit) by Mary P. Hunt. The MKAL was set to start on the 25th of December, promised daily clues and 12 installments. I figured cowls aren’t enormous, and the other patterns that Mary P. Hunt has made are very cool, so this was setting up to be a good one.

It required three yarns in DK weight with good contrast between A (main) and C (background) and some contrast with B too. I didn’t really feel like dyeing, so I dove into the hoard to find some yarn. I settled on Ultra DK in turquoise dyed in August 2023 for the main colour, Ultra DK with yellow spots dyed in September 2023 as the background and some DK 115 in orange from February 2025 as the contrast.

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Clue 1

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Clue 2

The pattern included some links to tutorials on colour dominance and jogless rounds and basically set us up for the project. This was super useful to just have in the document itself to refer back to.

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Clue 4

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Clue 5

Then the first clue dropped and we started knitting. The first section is corrugated ribbing, something I don’t recall having done before. However, it’s quite fun once you get into it. I got to use my relatively newly acquired skills with knitting left-handed to keep the yarns from tangling.

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Clue 7

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Clue 9

The second and third clue involved some pattern work where we made a cute design – it felt Scandivian inspired to me? And once clue three was done, we broke the B colour and continued with only two. I kept the blue in the left hand and the yellow in the right. I didn’t really see what was appearing as I was knitting it. I discovered the mountains from clue 4 and 5 only once I saw them in other people’s pictures on the forum.

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Clue 10

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Clue 11

I was also convinced for a while that the snout was from a bear, although it became clear along the way that it was actually a wolf. I guess the pattern image was a good hint towards that. Many people decided to duplicate stitch the eyes in a different colour, but I think that would make mine demonic looking, so I left that off. At some point, a paw print appeared in the sky too. Once the ears were done, the last three clues were almost mirrors of the first three.

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Blocking.

Cowl in blues, yellows and oranges with wolf, mountains and paw print motif. Inside.

This project was great. I had a lot of fun discovering the pictures every day and most of the time there were only 7 rows to complete, which is totally doable. I did have to pay attention and count (not my strong suit), but with the help of the line tool in Adobe Reader, I managed to keep track of which row I was on. I’m definitely planning on joining more MKALs if they seem as doable as this one.

Cowltopus

Joining a mystery knit along to make an octopus inspired “cowl”.

For the first time ever, I participated in a Mystery Knit-a-long (MKAL) last month. A KAL is a project where you get some part of the instructions and should complete those in a set time period. Mystery just means that you haven’t got a clue what the end result is going to be.

Sometime in September, I saw the announcement for the Cowltopus MKAL by Laura Nelkin, an MKAL that was to take place in October. It was on sale and it seemed like a fun idea, and I really like octopuses, so what could go wrong? Well, I forgot about it until about two days after the first clue came out and I hadn’t done any of the prep work. The prep included finding the right yarn and swatching it. I found the yarn I wanted to use, but it still needed to be dyed.

Glas octopus with yellow, retrieved https://www.oceanactionhub.org/octopus-species/

Glass octopus with orange and brown, retrieved https://octolab.tv/species/glass-octopus/

The pattern calls for DK weight yarn around 225 m/100 grams. There should be a main colour and a contrast colour, and both can be composed of mini skeins or just a single colour skein. There should be contrast between the MC and CC and gradients are encouraged. So I looked on the internet for different kinds of octopuses and settled on the quite elusive Glass Octopus Vitreledonella richardi. To match the inspiration, my MC was one full skein of Ultra DK in light blue. For the contrast, I chose to split a skein of Ultra DK into four section and dye them in a gradient from yellow to chestnut/brown.

Two skeins of yarn, left Contrast yarn from yellow outside to brown inside, right Main yarn in light blue

All skeins of yarn for the cowltopus. From left to right, yellow mini skein, orange mini skein, blue full skein, dark orange mini skein, brown mini skein

Once the yarn had dried, the gauge swatch got going. The swatch indicated that I had to size up my needles a little because I couldn’t get gauge otherwise. The first clue had come out on October 3rd, and was supposed to be done by the time clue 2 would be released a week later. I managed to get my yarn dyed and swatch ready by the 7th. On the 13th, I finished clue 1, to get right back on with clue 2.

Hood with yellow - orange gradient, end of clue 1 — Clue 1

Clue 2 went really smoothly and was actually finished on time, done by the 14th. This wasn’t super challenging yet, so I sailed right through it. The only new things were magic knots and needing to pay attention to the stitches. The third clue was where it got interesting. There were two options, brioche knit or ribbing. So I decided to learn something new and got going on the brioche. It wasn’t as scary as I was worried about. The instructions and video companion were very helpful and it all went according to plan.

Hood with yellow - orange - dark orange gradient, with brioche edge, end of clue 3 — Clue 3

Clue 4 was the last clue and where we were finishing the cowl – that turned out to be a hood. It was more brioche but now with waves in it. Actually quite fun to knit! The pattern is designed in a way that you shouldn’t run out of yarn unless you choose to ignore the instructions – my bad. I was supposed to start the end with 4 grams remaining, but I had 3.6 grams of yarn left. In the end, I had to tie in 15 cm of leftover yarn from the dying process to get the last few stitches finished.

Finished cowltopus with knitted octopus — Clue 4

Finished cowltopus, end of clue 4 — Clue 4

I enjoyed learning new things and not knowing exactly what was going to happen throughout the KAL. I’m not discounting doing one again even though the resulting hood isn’t totally my style. I’m very happy that one of my colours was solid, because the finished hoods from other knitters are overwhelmingly busy. I’ve not found much reason to wear it yet, so I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it. Sometimes having a fun process is more important than having a good result.

Tag: MKAL