A few weeks ago, I was chugging away on my Oblique cardigan, and things were looking good. I had a complete back, a complete sleeve, and was making progress on the second sleeve.
I was approaching the point where I needed to start doing sleeve increases on the second, and I checked my Rav notes and noticed that I hadn't been super obsessive about noting how many rows I'd worked even before doing the first increase, thinking going off fabric measurements would work out. I need both sleeves to begin sleeve cap shaping on exactly the same row, though, so that the diagonal lace patterns sync up with the back, so I grabbed my completed first sleeve to do a careful check.
I looked at that first sleeve, and something wasn't right. Can you see it?
Here, how about now?
See the textured stitch panels along the sides of the pieces? See how they're not the same?
They're supposed to be. And yet. There they are. In all their non-matchy glory.
Near as I can figure, this is what happened:
I cast on the sleeve and knit the ribbing as I saw fit - I made some adjustments because I'm playing yarn chicken, so I shortened the sleeves some - and then moved on to the main stitch patterns. I noticed that the stitch guides give instructions for Moss Stitch for the textured bits at the edges of the pieces. I also know that in some parts of the knitting world, moss stitch is the same thing as seed stitch, and in other parts of the knitting world it's absolutely not, so I worked the first row, then looked back at the stitch guide to see what this pattern wanted me to do. I read that instruction, worked across the row, looked at what I had, and concluded that this designer must be using moss stitch to mean the same thing as seed stitch, and continued knitting.
The problem is that the stitch guide actually had four lines of instructions to it, and had I actually followed the instructions for more than just the first two rows, I would have realized that the pattern wasn't supposed to be seed stitch. Which is what I did when it came time for the back: I noticed that the second line actually said Rows 2 & 3, and that's the critical bit that I missed the first time around. So the back piece and the second sleeve are edged in moss stitch, while the first sleeve is mostly edged in seed stitch.
Yup, mostly. Because I set the sleeve aside before reaching the sleeve cap shaping to do the back, because I want the armhole shaping to begin on both pieces at the same point in the diagonal lace, so it seemed prudent to determine where that should be with the back piece, where I'm less flexible about the desired finished length of the piece. When I finished the back, I came back to the first sleeve to do the sleeve cap with the (appropriate) moss stitch firmly set in my mind, which produced this:
See that line where the textured stitch panel changes? Yup. Did I see that as I was doing it? Nope.
Sigh.
This means that I have to pull out nearly the entire first sleeve, all the way down to the ribbing, to correct the problem.
Now, I was super hopping mad when I made this discovery - I was enraged to think that I would have to knit three sleeves for a sweater due entirely to my own failure to read and follow a pattern. I tried to calmly quash the urge to light the yarn on fire, laid all the pieces out for this photo documentation, and then unceremoniously shoved them into a bag and dumped that bag into a corner of the living room. That was at least two weeks ago.
Today? Well. They say time heals all wounds, and maybe there's something to that. Today I'm less mad, more resigned, I guess.
Doesn't mean I've taken apart that rogue sleeve yet though. (It hasn't been that much time.) I also still haven't touched the second sleeve since the events described here. (Again, I think I need more time to heal.) Maybe soon. I do want the sweater.
I suppose the silver lining is now I have the opportunity to make careful notes of when to start the sleeve increases to make the diagonal lace line up properly with the back?
I was approaching the point where I needed to start doing sleeve increases on the second, and I checked my Rav notes and noticed that I hadn't been super obsessive about noting how many rows I'd worked even before doing the first increase, thinking going off fabric measurements would work out. I need both sleeves to begin sleeve cap shaping on exactly the same row, though, so that the diagonal lace patterns sync up with the back, so I grabbed my completed first sleeve to do a careful check.
I looked at that first sleeve, and something wasn't right. Can you see it?
Here, how about now?
See the textured stitch panels along the sides of the pieces? See how they're not the same?
They're supposed to be. And yet. There they are. In all their non-matchy glory.
Near as I can figure, this is what happened:
I cast on the sleeve and knit the ribbing as I saw fit - I made some adjustments because I'm playing yarn chicken, so I shortened the sleeves some - and then moved on to the main stitch patterns. I noticed that the stitch guides give instructions for Moss Stitch for the textured bits at the edges of the pieces. I also know that in some parts of the knitting world, moss stitch is the same thing as seed stitch, and in other parts of the knitting world it's absolutely not, so I worked the first row, then looked back at the stitch guide to see what this pattern wanted me to do. I read that instruction, worked across the row, looked at what I had, and concluded that this designer must be using moss stitch to mean the same thing as seed stitch, and continued knitting.
The problem is that the stitch guide actually had four lines of instructions to it, and had I actually followed the instructions for more than just the first two rows, I would have realized that the pattern wasn't supposed to be seed stitch. Which is what I did when it came time for the back: I noticed that the second line actually said Rows 2 & 3, and that's the critical bit that I missed the first time around. So the back piece and the second sleeve are edged in moss stitch, while the first sleeve is mostly edged in seed stitch.
Yup, mostly. Because I set the sleeve aside before reaching the sleeve cap shaping to do the back, because I want the armhole shaping to begin on both pieces at the same point in the diagonal lace, so it seemed prudent to determine where that should be with the back piece, where I'm less flexible about the desired finished length of the piece. When I finished the back, I came back to the first sleeve to do the sleeve cap with the (appropriate) moss stitch firmly set in my mind, which produced this:
See that line where the textured stitch panel changes? Yup. Did I see that as I was doing it? Nope.
Sigh.
This means that I have to pull out nearly the entire first sleeve, all the way down to the ribbing, to correct the problem.
Now, I was super hopping mad when I made this discovery - I was enraged to think that I would have to knit three sleeves for a sweater due entirely to my own failure to read and follow a pattern. I tried to calmly quash the urge to light the yarn on fire, laid all the pieces out for this photo documentation, and then unceremoniously shoved them into a bag and dumped that bag into a corner of the living room. That was at least two weeks ago.
Today? Well. They say time heals all wounds, and maybe there's something to that. Today I'm less mad, more resigned, I guess.
Doesn't mean I've taken apart that rogue sleeve yet though. (It hasn't been that much time.) I also still haven't touched the second sleeve since the events described here. (Again, I think I need more time to heal.) Maybe soon. I do want the sweater.
I suppose the silver lining is now I have the opportunity to make careful notes of when to start the sleeve increases to make the diagonal lace line up properly with the back?
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