2021 Geek-A-Long Sweater: Clue 6

Risk: The very best way to lose all of your friends.

If you’ve ever dreamed of failing to invade Russia, and you have 18-36 hours to kill –Well, I’ve got the perfect game for you. Risk! It’s a great way to start a fight with your friends! Just kidding. Mostly. I hear there are some people that can just play it and then stop when they aren’t having fun any more. I don’t know any of those people, but I hear they do exist in the world.

This week’s clue features several little pops of extra colors. You can omit these, add them with duplicate stitch, or add them as you go along. I added mine as I went because as much as I have come to love duplicate stitch, I prefer to use that when I’m adding a color in one small area, and these are fairly spread out. I cut short lengths of the color I wanted to use. If you use this method you’ll want one small length of yarn for each of the colored stitches on the chart. For the purposes of this tutorial I will call these small lengths the ‘yarn bits’. My yarn bits were around 4” each. That was longer than needed, but if you have enough yarn to cut them that long I recommend it. The longer tails make it much easier to grab them with a crochet hook and pull them to the inside of the work when you are done.

1. When I reached the stitch that should be worked in the new color I took one of the pieces of that color and worked both the K and the P of the double stitch with my little yarn bit. VERY IMPORTANT: you MUST bring the MC and CC colors along for the ride while you do this. Bring them both to the back to K and to the front to P. Otherwise it will look really wonky.
2. Drop the tails of the 3^rd color where they are and proceed along the round, adding color pops as indicated in the pattern, and otherwise working with MC and CC.
3. Every few rounds or so, deal with your little tails (you could also do them all at the end but it’s so tedious. I found it was a more “peaceful” experience for me to do them every few rounds so I never had to do a ton of them at once):

Insert a crochet hook so that it is entering the fabric at the spot where one of your tails is exiting the fabric. Slide the hook through the inside of the work and grab the other tail of that yarn bit, pulling it through the center of the work and out so that both tails are now exiting the work in the exact same spot.

Choose a random spot (it really does not matter where) that is about 1” away from the place where the 2 tails are exiting the fabric. Use your crochet hook to pull both tails through the inside so now they both exit the fabric together a little bit away from the stitch.

Tie a sturdy little knot in the tails but take care not to pull hard on the stitch they are from. The goal here is to have some yarn slack between the knot and the stitch. If the knot is right on top of the stitch you may wind up with the little color pops being much tighter than the surrounding stitches and it will wind up looking rumpled. Pull the now knotted tails into the inside of the work.

Released so far:

• 2021 Geek-A-Long Sweater: On Board Project Sheet.
• 2021 Geek-A-Long Sweater FAQ
• Practice Swatch 1: Electric Company
• Practice Swatch 2: Railroad
• Clue 1
• Clue 2
• Clue 3
• Clue 4
• Clue 5

View On Board: Clue 6 by clicking this link or download it by clicking the button below. When you download the pattern from our website instead of through Ravelry, you will NOT receive automatic updates. You will have to come here and download the next clue every time. Please download it via Raverly if you are able, so you have immediate access to the clues as they are released and any errata that may appear.

~Megan-Anne

Invading Russia never goes the way you think it will.

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