Afraid of color, and with good reason

I needed a quick small knitted item to make in a 5 days time for my MIL's birthday and Mother's Day combo.  So I looked through my Pattern a Day calendar and spotted the golf club cover. The name does imply you can knit each pattern in one day and I was short on time. Plus, it has everything she likes: bright colors, golfing themed, kitschy, and a cute argyle top.

I have never done any color knitting, but I've heard Fair Isle isn't that hard, I'm a quick learner and pretty good at following written directions.  So I started knitting the bottom in the round figuring meanwhile I'd watch a few youtube fair isle videos to help with the argyle.

OK if you know how to color knit, you are already cringing for several reasons.
  1. Argyle is instaria, not fair isle
  2. It is not that easy - it involves bobbins and supposedly lots of untangling
  3. And, most importantly you CANNOT knit instarsia in the round
Hmm, by then I had already knit the complete bottom 6 inches in the round and with only 2 1/2 days left.

So I pondered. You can't knit instarsia, which creates argyle, in the round... so how do all those argyle socks exist?  I swear they do.  I checked in my sock drawer and sure enough, there they were several pairs of argyle socks and they were round and had no seams. I kept searching.

There must be an answer. I was already in deep - the gazillion bobbins of yarns were wound. At the 11th hour, literally since it was last night at 11 pm, on Knitty.com I found a pattern for knitting an instarsia hat IN THE ROUND by . It's called Instarsia Fun.  Fun, yeah, right.

Her method is to knit something similar to short rows, but instead of the wrap part, you do a YO at the beginning of each round and either a K2TOG or P2TOG at the end of each round.

Seems to be working so far as you can see. I am 6 rounds in, during breakfast this morning.

The big question now is, can I knit instarsia in the round, while on a 3 hour car trip to Pennsylvania?

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