Category: Dumbass Knitting Mistakes

Approximately 300 rows ripped. Ready to re-knit! Sometimes there’s just nothing to do for it but just do it.

The pattern is an 8-row repeat, decreases 2 stitches each repeat, down to four stitches. I have about 40-ish rows left.

I am so screwed.

Damn, damn, damn.

I might need a Bloody Mary this morning. Ripping will commence shortly.

No, I’m not having a flashback to the breakfast cereal, though I did love the stuff when I was a child. I’m talking about my newest lace project.

The yarn is from deep in the stash, Brooks Farm Harmony, in the color Froot Loops. They don’t make this any more, but it’s lovely stuff, half mohair, the rest wool and silk. It’s just as soft as can be, and very lustrous. I have a thousand yards of it to make a stole.

This will eventually be Morning Glory, by Anne Hanson (aka Knitspot).

I’ve had some fun and games getting this one going. I did a proper swatch, then cast on and knit away. This is knit in two pieces, starting from either end, and then grafted down the middle. There is a 12-row edging, then a wide border, then the morning glory stitch pattern for the main part of the stole. I got the edging done and about an inch of the border, and decided I needed to go up a needle size. Out it came.

Round two, bigger needle. Knit the edging, all of the border, and then the four transition rows to the center pattern. I get to the increase row, the one that has you increase a bunch of stitches across the row to get from the 50 center stitches up to 67. Here’s what it looked like.

I did so, counted, came up with something like 80-some stitches. Read the directions again, realized that I’d done the increase row wrong, tinked back, did it again,counted again. I still had way too many stitches. I decided to go to bed, sure that when I got up in the morning that the knitting fairies would have fixed this.

In the light of day, with a strong cup of coffee, I really read the pattern. It appears that during the transition between the 12-row edging and the border, way back about 12 inches of knitting ago, I just plain forgot to do the decrease row that was the transition between those two sections. Crap Crap Crappity Crap. I did that whole border section on too many stitches. There may have been some harsh words said in earnest when I finally figured this out yesterday morning. I tried to rip back just to the initial edging, made a mess of it, and ended up just ripping the whole thing out.

I would like to point out that in no way does this reflect on Anne’s pattern-writing abilities. She writes a fine pattern. The charts are clear, the directions could not be more plain. I just didn’t follow them.

I now have the thing restarted, though I was sorely tempted to go paddle the canoe out in the middle of the lake and sacrifice the yarn to the Loch Steili Monster*. I love the Froot Loopy-ness of it too much to do that. I have most of the edging done. From now on, I’m reading directions.

Oh, and that’s my new yarn bowl, from Knit Witch. Go and get one of your own, they are lovely!

*Yes, we have our own Monster on Lake Steilacoom, where we live. John and I have both seen her swimming across the lake. She appears to be friendly, as no water skiers or small pets have gone missing, but it never hurts to give her a peace offering now and again.

Or,

It’s A Good Thing I Took It Off The Needles To Measure

Or, Fourth Time’s A Charm?

That’s Big Grey in the background, the sweater that fits John like he wants this one to fit. That’s True Blue in the foreground, off the needles. That would be the third attempt at getting this thing up and running. I can’t explain this, except the gauge that I’m knitting the real thing is just a tiny bit tighter than my swatch. Even counting for the very tiny bit that my swatch grew when I washed it, this is not going to work. I also had problems with the increase row from the ribbing to the body. I was to increase 13 stitches, and given the instructions in the pattern, I did that row twice before I figured out that the instructions were wrong. It required pins to mark where those increases should go, and a little math-head to get it past the ribbing.

Somebody asked in the comments to my last post about the tape measure. Here it is:

I don’t remember exactly where I got this one, but I have a couple of these in different patterns. You can get them here.

And here’s a photo of Lucy to distract you from the destruction in progress. Lucy hardly ever comes downstairs any more, as she is a coward and likes her master suite upstairs just fine. She perched herself on a chair in the kitchen next to me yesterday.

Go ahead, tell her how pretty she is. I think she was saying, “Dude, that sweater is going to be too small for Dad.”

And here we go again.

It would be easier to go buy him a freaking sweater, but not nearly as entertaining.

If any of you have a Garmin Nuvi GPS unit, you will immediately know what I am talking about with that title. “Jill” is the woman who is the voice of Garmin on these units, and if you make a mistake or don’t follow her instructions, man, she really gets on your case. Jill says “recalculating” with a really bitchy attitude that makes it sound like you just gave her a dog turd to eat. John says it’s like having two wives in the car telling him how to drive.

I’ve had to do a bit of recalculating of my own with the new sweater. I’ve named it True Blue, as it is indeed pretty blue, and it’s for my true blue husband. I’ve ripped this sucker out and restarted three times now.

I didn’t take a photo of the first version. I wanted to use the pattern for the Father/Son sweater that I used for John’s Big Grey sweater, but completely ignored that fact that the Beaverslide worsted is a lighter weight yarn than the Peace Fleece that I used for that one. I actually did knit a swatch, then squinted sideways and decided that if I just knitted the size one size larger than the previous grey version, that all would be well. Denial is a lovely thing. I got almost two inches of twisted rib done on the back piece before reality hit. Way too small, out it came.

Recalculating.

I then dithered about it for a week, and finally decided to fire up the old PC laptop and make a pattern using Sweater Wizard. It’s the only software package that I use that has no good alternative in a Mac format (yet! she’s designing it as we speak!), and I’m not about to pay for and install Windoze on this Mac just to run one program. Out came the pattern, and I cast on again. This time I got about an inch done of the ribbing before I realized my newest mistake.

Most sweater patterns have the sizes listed as the actual finished measurements. That is, if you want your finished sweater to measure 24 inches across the chest, or 48 inches around, you would pick the size that said “48”. That’s the size I made for John with the Father/Son sweater before. SW does it differently. It has you enter your actual chest measurement, along with other info, including the weight of your fabric and desired ease, and it calculates away.

Do you see where this is going? I forgot this, entered 48 inches in the little box that asked for chest measurement. I had embarked on a sweater that would ultimately be 52 inches around, not quite the look he wants.

Out it came, again.

Recalculating.

Back to the drawing board, now with a new, resized pattern. I’m sure by this time tomorrow I’ll have found something else that I’ve screwed up.

No, I’m not talking about that “F” word, though that one did get used a bit yesterday as well. I’m talking about the “Finished” “F” word. You know, where you are approaching the end of a looooong project, and you are merrily grafting along on 125 stitches, thinking cockily to yourself, “I’ll be Finished with this one soon!” I just wonder what I’ll knit next!”

In my defense, I actually did finish that looooonnnnngg grafting row on Langsjal Jóhönnu yesterday. I was about to pull out the last two lifelines when I decided to look it over first. I gave a simple little tug to even out some stitches, and the yarn snapped, unzipping about three inches of the grafting seam in the center. Really, I wasn’t tugging hard, not even as hard as this puppy will get tugged around during the blocking. I think my grafting was much too tight, so it would have needed to be redone anyway.

After the first horrified thought of running to the back yard and lighting the whole mess on fire, I took a careful look at it.

I fiddled with it a bit, trying to get those unzipped stitches corralled on needles, then decided that the whole seam would need to be redone anyway, and just undid the length of it.

That’s the big mess, off the needles. I frogged the bigger piece back to the lifeline, and got it back on a needle without too much swearing (giving thanks about every two stitches that I hadn’t ripped out the lifelines). The smaller end piece was a different story. I hadn’t bothered with a lifeline when I did this one, and I kept unravelling row after row, trying to get to a row where I could actually identify stitches to get on the needle. This whole section was a mess of double yarn-overs and  Sl-K2-psso’s, and I finally gave up and just ripped the whole thing out.

Ahem. There might have been a few f-words heard along with this one, too. John was smart enough to leave the room and go watch the basketball game during this part. (Go ‘Heels!*)

I reknit the last 15 rows or so of the big section. This time I placed a lifeline on the second to the last row, so if I have to do this again, I’ll only be a row short. I tried out a new-to-me trick with the lifeline. The Options needles have a tiny hole at the base of the needle, which is used with a tiny tool to tighten the needle on the cable. If you run your lifeline through this little hole, then knit the row, it pulls the line through the stitches as you go.

That hole is really tiny, but I use waxed dental floss (Glide Original!) for my lifelines, and you can smoosh the end of it so it will go right through. Note that if you use stitch markers along the row, this method of threading a lifeline through the stitches won’t work, as your line will also end up through the markers.

I didn’t invent this method, by the way. I’ve seen it several other places, but Fleegle has several links for how to do this here. She even drilled holes in some of her other circular needles to make this possible.

Then I cast on a whole bunch of stitches, and started the second end over.

Thirty rows to go, then another lifeline, then I’ll try that grafting again. Loosely, this time.

*Yes, I married a Carolina boy. He made me learn the Tarheels Fight song before he would marry me.

There is a little trend going around the blogs of knitting directly from the unwound hank of yarn, instead of winding it up into center pull balls. I’m pretty sure that the knitting-directly-from-the-hank knitters, who shall remain unnamed here, were just pulling our legs on this one. I rolled my eyes at the first blog report on this, but then when two or three more reported that this was the best thing since sliced bread, I decided to try it.

I’m here to report that, with certainty, this clearly does NOT prevent yarn barf.

And no, I didn’t take pictures, but it just took me the better part of an hour to untangle the mess that ensues when you try to get all smarty-pants and follow the latest knitting fads. I wasn’t about to leave the mess spread over the entire kitchen floor with the pet menagerie drooling around the edges like a pack of wild hyenas, while I went to fetch the camera. Let’s just say that from now on, I’ll be dutifully winding my yarn hanks into neat little cakes.

I promise knitting progress photos in the next post. I’m off to wind yarn.

Oh, and Dorothy reminded me that I needed to add Lewey to the sidebar. If you look over there to the left, there he is!