For many years I knit without swatching first; I have a closet full of tops and sweaters that don't fit me (or any normal shaped person) to prove it. So I eventually learned the lesson, and swatch religously.
For my Bohus, I swatched not only the colorwork pattern but the stockinette body as well. Since I prefer a very small knit neckband, I swatched that, too. The pattern suggests size 0 needles for the ribbing and size 1.5 needles for the body. I'm a loose knitter, and found I got gauge of 8.5 stitches per inch with size 00 in stockinette and size 0 in colorwork. And that's what I used to knit the neckband and yoke.
For five days I knit. I knit and I knit and I knit. Hundreds upon hundreds of stitches. When I didn't like the dark color I had picked for the next-to-final-section, I ripped out three rows of 388 stitches each and knit them over with another color. I knit the entire yoke before checking gauge again. Though I thought it looked a little tight, I kept referring to the pattern which says "yoke will have only a slight slope" so I thought I was OK. I knit all 72 rounds of the yoke, averaging 300 stitches each, for a total of 216,000 stitches. That's almost a quarter million stitches. (OK, it's closer to a fifth of a million stitches, but that doesn't sound the same, does it?)
I was, therefore, absolutely dumbfounded to find that my gauge was off. And not by just a little; the pattern called for (and my swatch measured) 33 stitches over 4 inches. When done, my yoke measured almost 64 stitches over the same 4 inches. Twice the stitches per inch!
Aaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!!
So, with a heavy heart, I will have to start over. I will have to rip out 72 rows of angora knitting, in 11 different colors, and re-knit a quarter of a million stitches.
There's not enough chocolate in the world to console me.
No comments:
Post a Comment