It's All Good

Part the first:

Friday night T (w/ Theo and Jeremy),

 Ruth and Shirley

Becki, me and Aimee all met up at Panera's for the GREAT CAST-ON.  Marina could not make it and Deirdre was Missing in Action.  We had such a great time some of us didn't leave until almost 9.

Ruth and T both started baby/toddler sweaters.  

Aimee a hat. (photos complements of Aimee)

Becki and I both began toe-up socks and Shirley was new, not a Ravellenics participant but was invited anyway to join us after her shift at Panera's.  The more knitters the merrier.

Becki had made little toe swatches with her hand spun 2 -ply MVOS.  Me I made the world's smallest swatch, (shown in the last blog) and incomprehensively believed those measurements so cast on with US zeroes.  After 3/4 of an inch I realized that the fabric was way tight.  We discussed this little difference from the swatch and decided I should leave the toes alone as they will never wear out, but do the main part of the socks with US1's and the heels with US0's.    Then we thought about how that swatch didn't work very well even though I used 3 needle sizes and measured carefully.

I also remembered the rule about swatches needing to be about 4" by 4".  Hmmmmm.  Think that makes much difference in gauge?  Duh - well I guess it sure does.

However, even with the fooling around, eating and fun my first evening's goal of completing 2 toes was accomplished.

Part the second:

Saturday's goal was to get the skirt ready for cast-off and do an inch on each sock.

One inch was accomplished on one sock and then I went back to the skirt.  At around 7pm, when I was about 5 rows from cast-off, Jim remarked that the skirt was awfully short.  I answered that Rick wanted it short and pulled out the email with Rick's sketch of dimensions.  That was when I saw the the 12" was not for the entire skirt but for the hip to hem measurements.  oh my!  So I measured the last tier and came up 5 inches short as it should be 17", not twelve.   What to do?  What to do?  I left it alone for a bit to let my brain cool down and ponder this puzzle.  Actually I went and watched an episode of While Collar on my netflix CD.  I do love that show.  

That bit of space let me decide to keep tiers one and two as is (phew!) and only redo tier 3. The decision could have been to start over so I was grateful.  At 10pm I began frogging.  Mind you this meant removing a stitch marker every 6 sts for over 300 stitches and not losing most of them.  I slowly removed the needle which allowed me to lift off the st markers and then frogged back to round 5.  At that point I had no real plan so thought some sleep might help before I messed it all up. Sometimes I am clever and sometimes I am not.  Looks like this was a combo event.

But before I headed up to bed I wanted to recheck the tier 3 stitch pattern.  It hadn't been turning out the way I wanted and I needed to know where I had gone wrong.  I wanted a scalloped edge effect but was only getting mesh.   Actually I had been telling myself that becuase I was using a 40" needle and the skirt had a larger circumference at that point that the needle was holding the scalloping as straight. 

Of course I couldn't find the page where the pattern was located so looked through at least 5 stitch books.  One thing I saw in common in all of them was the fact that if you want a scalloped effect the yo's need to be in the same column of stitches.  I was doing a dropped st pattern but the idea was essentially the same.  hmmmnnn   Finally I found the little idea book the skirt was dreamed up in and sure enough there was the Elongated - Wave Stitch, p81 of Barbara Walker's Treasury, Book 1.  Hmmmmnnn the picture does what I wanted so where did I go wrong? 

 Now I was wide awake.  Slowly the instructions were charted. It was then that I saw that the dropped sts did not go above each other but alternated in each row so that the elongated stitches cancelled out the regular stitches after every 2nd row.  Odd very odd.  It was now almost 11, the bunnies needed to go to bed and so did I.  The picture only alternates after every 4 +2  rows.

This morning I re-looked at the instructions and saw that this pattern was listed as 8 st + 6.  That means any multiple of 8 plus 6 stitches on the end.  However in the first 4 rows it only uses 8+2 sts.  The last 4 use 8+6 though.  hmmmmmnnnnnnn   I never expected an error in a Barbara Walker book but think we have one here.  I recharted to mimic the picture then did a swatch to check.  Sure enough it now works properly.  My copy is ancient so maybe/hopefully in the newer ones this has been corrected?

Frogged back another 3 rounds and then tinked and placed the st markers back where they belonged.  Funny how things work easier in the morning.  So because I made a length mistake I was able to catch a major stitch error before I cast-off, felt done and then sadly had to frog it all out.  Funny how the Universe does guide if it is left alone to do so.  Thank you.

Alas, no more was accomplished on the sock but the skirt is back to round 5 with more rounds planned for this afternoon after July's Fondle This! kits are made ready.