Saved by Micro Knitting!

Not sure if this is an example of what not to do, but at least it serves to demonstrate the golden rule of checking over one's knitting work not just frequently but thoroughly. I thought I was following this rule with the gansey but when I actually looked over my work for errors, I was doing it too way quickly, convincing myself there weren't any errors, and not "seeing the trees for the forest" (*smile*). As I got closer to the neck shaping and shoulders, I realized with absolute horror that I had an unforgivable error. Many, many, many rows previously. 48 to be exact. 24 knitting hours ago. When had that happened? Was it when the dog was wanting to be let out? When I ran downstairs to get a Skinny Cow ice cream treat? Midway through an engrossing television program? It was an error I knew would drive me bonkers and deep down, I knew that if I left it as is, I would always notice ONLY those offending stitches every time I looked at the sweater. I debated ripping out entire rows, one by one, all the way down. Given the investment of amount of hours I would lose by doing just that, I mulled over trying to rip out the minimum number of stitches down in a segment to the offending mistake and then trying to knit back up within those 2 stitches, row by row. Fear told me I am "clumsy" at those sort of knitting manipulations. Optimism asked "what would I have to lose?" I figured if it didn't work out in the end, then last resort would be to rip out a good portion of the front of the sweater afterwards and reknit the entire top 1/3 of the sweater. I was willing to try any tactic to avoid having to do that. I am not familiar enough with lace type stitches to easily recognize what they should look like after each step. Because the error included some lace movements such as K2TOG, YO and the companion YO, S1, K1, PSSO, I knit a template of each pattern sequence and subsequent wrong side purl rows in light colored, bulky yarn. That way I was able to refer to this knitted "template" of what success would look like at each step in order to properly manipulate my crochet hook, size one-er's, and trusty-toothpick- turned-cable-needle. I attached orange markers on each row that was a K2TOG, YO and green markers on each row that warranted a YO, S1, K1, PSSO. Each wrong side row was absent a marker as things were getting quite crowded in such a confined space... onwards and upwards! I'm sure this type of recovery is easy for everyone else but I am rather tickled with myself as the end result is pretty darn good. After blocking it will be almost perfect. Time to put my needles down and do a happy dance!

Let's call it a Gansey summer!

As my friend Donna would say "A herd of turtles moves faster" than the progress on my gansey sweater (Project 5 of 9 for Year Two, Nihon Vogue). It is painfully slow, but tiny stitch by tiny stitch, the garment is turning into something I hope will be treasured for years to come. On size one needles (2.25 mm or 2.5mm - I have seen them sold by the same vendor in either measurement), it takes me nearly half an hour to essentially knit a single round or a row on each side for front and back. Even my smallest cable needle was too large to use so I raided the pantry and resorted to using toothpicks as "the just right circumference" cable needles. Can you believe it? 270 rows from the bottom edge to the top of the shoulder calculates to 135 hours of knitting from cast on to shoulders. That estimate assumes NO errors! Add in time for ripping out, fixing mistakes and figuring out pattern design, then you get an idea of what a significant investment of time and energy this project is turning out to be. I'm fretting about it as I imagine losing an entire summer due to this sweater. Right now I estimate at least 28 hours left until I am able to 3 needle bind off the shoulders together. I've spent my fair share of time fixing mis-crossed cables, adding a forgotten yarn over and re-aligning seed stitches. With each row taking so long to complete, I have become adept at what I call "micro-knitting". Rather than ripping out row after row to get to the source of the problem, I'll go the section where the mistake is and rip back down just that section width of stitches until I get to the row where the mistake originated. Then, using extra needles (and sometimes toothpicks in this case!), stitch markers, and a crochet hook, I'll knit whatever pattern I need within that segment all the way back up to the last row completed. So far so good, but definitely not advised to be done late at night when one is already tired of knitting and just plain tired. Our next Nihon Vogue class is July 18 and 19th so there is an optimistic 50/50 chance the gansey will be ready. Inspiration for the gansey sweater came from Design 3 in the Japanese Guernsey and Aran sweater book. I am using the same center cable but substituted lace bordered rope and claw cables rather than using the existing wave cables. Since I needed 7 rather than 5 motifs to provide the length of sweater required, I designed an anchor, a lace pattern and a tree of life to augment the existing assortment of Design 3 motifs such as sailboat, lace diamond and starfish. The single size sweaters in the Japanese books are made for very petite models and I, ummm, certainly don't fit within their sizing parameters! In order to get the marriage band to fit the width of the sweater for me, I redesigned the arrow length and width to get the number of stitches I needed. For the main body, I adjusted the width of the side pattern between the last cable and the side seams. I did a channel island cast on and garter welt. The garter welt keeps flipping up just as Karen Campbell warned me about, so I will have to block the heck out of it to get it to eventually lay flat. I added my "JMB" initials from an alphabet template in Beth Brown-Reinsel's book. Too late for me, but I also found impressive lettering patterns (Gothic, Codex, Germanic, Danish, Irish Half-uncial) in a book by Nancy Spies called "Here Be Wyverns". After the cast on, the sweater was knit in the round to the underarm gussets. The gussets were created by adding stitches adjacent to a center purl stitch on each side seam. That gusset section is then held on a stitch holder or waste yarn for a later time. The front and back of the sweater is then worked flat separately. This is the stage I am at now. I still have to finish the front and back up to the shoulder seams, incorporating the neck shaping. Once the shoulders are joined, the sleeves will be picked up and worked down from the shoulder. The other half of the gusset will be added while working the sleeve. For the neckline ribbing, I plan to do a mock turtleneck with a button placket but don't have that process clear in my mind yet. I also have to figure out how to reverse the cables and patterns I am using on the sweater body for the sleeves since they are worked from the bottom up on the sweater body but will be worked from the top down on the sleeves. Lastly, I need to determine what cuff ribbing and cast off I want to do that will complement the channel island cast and whatever neck treatment I decide on. Lots of thinking to do. Lots more knitting to do!