Capitalism - Feudalism without the Kings

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Knitting Friday

 

A short, late post because this is the first day all week I've been able to get anything done. Just got back from food shopping; never shop at lunch time, ever. 

 

Little body, big head, sick dog

First to report: Miss L is much, much better. As a dog, she lasted a day without any food and then a day of weaning back to regular food much better than most humans would.

 

The picture on the right was taken during her illness in the "starving" phase. She looks so bedraggled which only a picture shows since she was really happier and perkier than she looks.

 

I finally added two new projects to my knitting library. One is a top-down lace sweater made from two strands of crochet cotton. I had used this yarn to make two summer shawls I adore. I wore one today in 96F outdoor weather and it was perfect in the freezer sections of the grocery. Pictures next week.

The color isn't as bad as it looks.

The picture for this Friday is a light green?, yellow green?, puke green? top-down (can I really knit any other kind of top?) summer shell.

 

I had originally planned to work the entire shell in the beginning lace stitch (which is a simple one row of *yo, sk2p, yo, k3*, second row of K, third row of *k3, yo, sk2p, yo* and a fourth row of K.) It's a 6 stitch pattern but you could work the lace rows in *yo, K2tog, K3* instead of *yo, sk2p, yo, K3*. Just as long as you work lace stitch - K3 - lace stitch - K3 across the row and remember your pattern stitch is 5x sts, not 6x sts now.

Inquiring minds may wonder why I have a pattern of 20 rows of lace, then 5 rows of K throughout the shell instead of my first plan.

 

Well, I got to the underarms where you had to bind off for the top of the arm and cast on for the underarm and discovered that, although I had been working with a multiple of 6 sts throughout, to keep in the continuity of the pattern, I would have to CO 12 sts for one underarm and then CO 9 sts for the other one. Talk about crop circles! How could that be? I checked and rechecked; I counted once, then I counted again correctly, then again a third time either correctly or not since I was too math tired to care by then.

 

I'm grousing for a reason because I was faced with ripping back to the collar and working a different lace. This is problems tons of knitters face every day and in the past I would have just frogged the damn thing. But I didn't, and you shouldn't get discouraged with your work. Before you frog, which is the point of no return, see if you can modify your pattern to incorporate your problem. That's what I did. I knew that if I started working in stockinette, I could CO the same amount of stitches for each underarm. I also knew that I had checked my gauge for the lace stitch, and not stockinette. So if I continued in stockinette in the body I would have a tighter (unwearable?) sweater.

 

Here's my solution: I had worked the beginning lace pattern for 19 rows to just before the bind off for the top of the arm. I bound off the stitches there with a K row (Row 20). Then I upped my needles to US 10.5 and worked 5 rows of stockinette starting with the CO row for each underarm. (I CO 12 stitches for each underarm.) After 5 stockinette rows, I switched back to US 10 and worked 20 rows in the lace pattern. I'll do this (20-5-20-5-20) to the hem and I think I'll be able to conquer that pesky underarm CO problem with a slightly different pattern. So don't get discouraged when you come across problems like the weird one I had. You may have to think out of the box but a knitting solution is usually available.

Another tip I discovered the hard way: some lace stitches are counter-intuitive and for me sk2p is one of those. Sk2p is slip 1 K, K2tog, pass the slip stitch over the k2tog. You decrease two stitches this way but the one YO on each side of the sk2p bring you back to your original count. But while I almost always work *YO, K2tog* correctly, I would work sk2p and then forget to pass the slipped st over the k2tog at least once a lace row. I'm finally checking each row which is cumbersome. But don't be afraid to modify your lace pattern. You just have to keep the same stitch count and with sharp lace needles, a K3tog will get you the same results as sk2p with half the angst.

OK, we're heading into a heat wave in NJ. Hosing downs of Miss L are in the near future. See you next week. I'm thinking about a crochet KAL. It would be a top-down summer shell (how original!) but I'd like to see if I could duplicate the knitted look. After all, while I love knitting, fixing mistakes are such a breeze in crochet. Happy knitting.