A few months ago I joined Ravelry, and it has changed my knitting world. I can search for patterns and see what yarns people have used and how it looks on various body shapes. I can look up a particular yarn and see what people have done with it. And last but not least, I can record my own projects and stash.
To Jeff, late at night: But if I stay up a little bit longer, I can tick off another 5% on this project!
So what have I been knitting? Well, there's the baby blanket that I can't quite manage to finish. It's almost done, but I have trouble becoming motivated. I won't go into why, since it's a depressing story.
My other standing work-in-progress is a cabled tunic-sweater from a yarn manufacturer's free pattern. I fell in love with the design, but the pattern has a number of problems.
- The needle size suggested for the gauge is way too large for an average knitter (I generally knit exactly on gauge)
- The gauge is given for stockinette while the pattern is all cables, and different stitch patterns knit differently
- The stitch counts after decreases are wildly inaccurate for any size other than the smallest
- The pattern was revised after the first version, to add pattern repeats for some sizes, but the blocking dimensions weren't changed, and the original stitch counts seemed fine to me. None of the other problems were fixed in the second version.
- The yardages are not correct; I needed another ball of yarn to finish the sweater.
At this point I've knitted the sweater twice over, and I'm not even quite done yet. First I knitted it up with the suggested needles (#7). I did knit a gauge swatch, and it came out at the needed stitch gauge but not the row. The common wisdom is that stitch gauge matters more than row gauge, so I didn't worry about that. Unfortunately, this sweater is different because the cable pattern is a set 138 rows; the body pieces and sleeves came out too long. When the horizontal yoke also came out way too long and I ran out of yarn, I frogged the whole sweater.
I went down to #6 needles and knit up a front/back piece; still too long. At this point it had sunk into my head that row gauge is all, so I went down to #5's (now within the yarn's standard recommended gauge, #3-5) and knit the horizontal yoke. That came out to the perfect length, yay! So I frogged the #6 piece and knit it all back up on #5's.
And then I ran out of yarn before I could finish the yoke.
The good news is, Ravelry saved the day! I found the exact dye lot I need in another knitter's stash, and she's mailing me a ball. How awesome is that?
My latest project was a foray into lace. I am happy with the way it turned out, although I'm not absolutely satisfied because I made a mistake in knitting on the border. (Yes, I am a severe perfectionist!) Luckily, I don't think the mistake is something anyone else will notice. I finished blocking the shawl yesterday and mailed it off this afternoon, even though I had to wait in line at the post office for 40 minutes to do so. Boo slow post office, yay lace!
My next project is a cabled steering wheel cover!
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