Among several tasks on my excellent, new, to-do tracking system for last week, there was only one real priority – to re-publish my May design (that I posted about a few weeks ago in Catching Up). The task seemed do-able.
It's true that what started out as a simple rewrite to modify yarn and add metrics had taken a turn when I decided to redevelop it to be knit in the round instead of flat and embed its shaping invisibly inside the cable stitch pattern instead of at its edges. Then the gauge of my new yarn, Quince's cotton Willet, turned out to be slightly different than its obsolete predecessor and required a bunch of recalculations. But by now I had made great progress on the bodice, and had only to trim the neckline and work the ever-so-short cap sleeves. Then I'd be done. Re-publishing within the week seemed do-able and I would happily check this off of my list!
Cotton is less elastic than wool, and because of this, I found out, tends to be less forgiving in some aspects of sweater-making, such as picking up stitches along the deep v-neckline of May for its rib trim. The stitch counts my calculations told me I needed left noticeable gaps, and after a few trials I determined that the problem lay in the absence of a selvage along this neckline. Since the v starts below the armholes and the piece is knitted bottom-up and now in the round, this remedy required both sides of the bodice front and its back to be unraveled down to this start point. I took a breath, did this, and began again.
After 2 days of re-knitting, with my neckline now complete with selvage, I gave it another go – with the same disappointing result, unfortunate gaps along the pick up edge. I took a few more breaths, (I did breathe in between these trials, but hardly), unraveled for the second time, re-knitted it as it was, and while I was doing so thought hard about another solution.
In my third attempt, I tried a method I'd read about but hadn't used before. With smaller needles I picked up a stitch in every row along the front v edges – many more stitches than I needed, but with no gaps. On the trim round that followed where I introduced the knit 1, purl 1 rib, along these front v edges I modified the sequence as knit 1, purl 2 together to decrease these extra stitches away. Finally, success!
4 days later.. so much for planning.
Among several tasks on my new to-do tracking system for this week, there is only one real priority – to re-publish May. The task seems do-able.
Update – revised May finally re-published 1/15/2016.
