Speed Bumps

I'm one of those knitters who is more likely to turn to a new project when a current one is not going well, rather than plowing through the problem.

I thought I'd start off the new year right by attending to one of my UFO's, the ruffled jacket.

This is a fairly chunky yarn (Classic Elite Gatsby) and was supposed to have been a quick knit. But I already abandoned it once, after I had finished knitting the front and back pieces but was not happy with the 3-needle bind-off I used on the shoulder seams. So it got stuffed into the project basket. I resurrected it to take another stab at it. I undid the 3-needle bind-off and re-blocked the pieces. It was at this point that I realized the neckline on the back piece did not match the schematic.

I followed the directions and got a shape like this...


...when the schematic showed a trapezoid shape, not a concave neckline. I couldn't find any reference to this on the errata page (which was hard to find, by the way). I emailed Tahki Stacy Charles and got a nice reply back, saying they thought the directions were right and the schematic was wrong. But in thinking about it, I decided to go with the schematic instead, since you're supposed to pick up stitches from the neckline to make a ruffle, and it might be weird to have a ruffle sitting so far back if you go with the concave neckline. so I had to redo the back.


After all that, I seamed up the front, back, and sleeves, only to find that the sleeve cap bunches up in an unflattering way. Needless to say, the project is back in my basket.

In other news, I made good progress on the Juno Regina stole and really like it. But the Options needles I was using were driving me nuts since they kept unscrewing. Finally, I went to my LYS and bought a set of Addi Lace needles. Problem solved! That was a minor speed bump. I was going to get rid of my Options needles, but I think I'll try superglueing them to the cables--they obviously won't be modular anymore, but maybe I can at least get some use of them that way.

The other active project on my needles is this boatneck pullover, using Knitpicks Swish DK. I'm usually pretty lazy about doing a proper swatch, but in this case, I lucked out because I had just used the same yarn on the buddha pillow, so it served as a huge gauge swatch!



So far, things are going smoothly, but I did make some mods. I'm knitting this in a smaller gauge than the pattern calls for, to size it down. I'm knitting in the round and would have ideally added a "faux seam stitch," but I forgot to do so. I added waist shaping, since I almost always want that in a sweater. And finally, I reversed one set of cables so that the cables would be mirror images of one another, rather than exactly alike.