Knitted Chevron Pillow

Last month I bought some new toys and today I started playing with my some of the new yarn.

Here's one of the eight blocks I need.  It's about 4" x 6".  I cast on 18 stitches and midway through the block I noticed I had 19.  The white yarn is very loose and nubby (look at the strand at the bottom of the photograph) and I accidentally knit through one of the nubs.  

I knew I should have kept count, but after so many rows, it's hard enough to remember if you're on row 11 or 12.  So instead of getting up from my cozy chair and getting my twirly-dial row counter, I just sat there and kept working.  I figured I had the hang of the pattern, which is a simple knit/purl where you increase/decrease the two colors in each row by one stitch.  And soon after, I must have picked up the extra stitch.  I decided I didn't care.

When you switch yarn colors, you're supposed to twist the two yarns together so you don't have a hole.  I didn't see that part of the instructions at first, so I started out with holes.  Then when I tried to twist the yarns on subsequent rows, I still wound up with holes.  Eventually I got the hang of it.  I decided to just leave those holes for now, but I might stitch them up if they bug me too much later on.

I'm going to use these blocks on a pillow.  These are the other ingredients. I like my chevron curtain so much that I'm doing another chevron pattern.   

I didn't mention it before, but when I started the chevron curtain, I wanted to make the blocks rectangular.  So instead of an equilateral triangle, I would have isosceles triangles.  I thought it would be easy!  I started with two rectangles, right sides together, sewed a diagonal line across them, cut them apart, ironed them open, and then said "hmm."  What I had wasn't a rectangle, it was a kite shape.  Good thing I only cut/sewed a few of them at first.

That's why I was so glad to find this knitting pattern that had chevron rectangles.