City Walk Mini Scarf ◈SAMPLE◈: How I Feel About Sample Knitting

June 5, 2026

Project recap

My first experience in sample knitting

This is my very first sample knit! After working on this project, my verdict is that sample knit does feel different comparing to working on my own project. I have few observations:

  • I read patterns more carefully. When I’m knitting my own projects I often get lazy and do not scan everything at the beginning, which I would do for the sample to ensure I understand the pattern and able to catch any confusion ahead.
  • I check my work more regularly. Because the sample must be 100 percent correct, I check the progress more frequently by stopping and observing my stitch work.
  • No tolerance to mistake. As a perfectionist I usually would fix mistakes but I do sometimes let minor mistakes go, especially when it’s not obvious. However for the sample knit I have no choice but to fix the mistakes or re-do it.
  • No need to modify the pattern. The sample is a sample, so I just need to follow the pattern and don’t need to think too much about it. I rarely feel the need to stop and delve deeper into the design or make major modifications. Basically I just need to do whatever the pattern says, and after a while I naturally understand it during the process.
  • A bit time pressure. Thankfully I knit quite fast, so I’m pretty confident in my speed and not worry too much about the deadline. However, I do find myself become more mindful about the time when I was redoing the work since the previous WIP time got wasted.
  • I feel slightly attached to the project before letting it go, but eventually, I’m indeed a process knitter. For this project, even though I finished it in just three days, I actually felt a tiny bit of reluctance when it came time to hand it in (my baby 🥺). But I guess that’s just part of the sample knitting process! At the end, I’m a process knitter who enjoy the process rather than the final project. I think it is partially because I didn’t get to choose the yarn and colour combo. For my own projects especially those one I spent lots of time selecting the yarn and brainstorm the colour combo or modifying the design, I found myself significantly more attached to the finished object.
  • It’s really fun to explore yarns and patterns I wouldn’t normally knit with. I have never planned to knit something like mini scarf before. I usually prefer big, chunky scarves, but it turned out it’s pretty easy to style and I actually like it. I’m already thinking of knitting a similar pattern for myself next time.

Well, few months ago I was thinking that with my speed of knitting, my home will quickly fill in with my knitted sweaters and accessories. I even have considered some possible solutions to slow myself down, for example, knitting withsuper-fine yarn only with mini needles. Turned out sample knitting could be my solution: I can knit for others while making some small amount of money as compensation only with mini needles.

Fixing mistakes of cables

I did make few mistakes through the process. My first mistake is my “shortcut” way of knitting 1/1RC. By the time I noticed my mistakes I’ve knitted 60+ rows already, but after trying fixing it I feel it’s not worth it and decided to frog it back.

My second mistake is one row of the 1/1 cable being reversed. When stopping and observing the stitch I felt something was off, after examining closely I noticed one of the cables was in reversed position. This time I decided to go down two dozens of rows to fix the cable. Luckily, small cables are relatively easy to fix but my eyes still got hurt after a long fixing session.

Project timeline

  • [2026-06-02 Tue] – Cast on.
  • [2026-06-05 Fri] - Bind off and block.

New techniques learned

  • Knitting 1/1 cables without cable needle (while not dropping stitches in the air)

 📂 knitting  📂 necktorse  📂 sampleknitting
 🏷️️citywalk  🏷️️sample1

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Knitlog [2026-06-08 Mon]