Tempest lived up to her name. It might be very near impossible to recount all the errors made with this project, but I will do my best to give you a sense of what happened. Every error was 100% mine, not Tempest's. As usually happens, when one thing goes wrong, everything goes wrong from there on out. The lessons were many and I grew as a person and a knitter, but the lesson you could/should take away from my experience is that if I can be intrepid with a project, one that trips me up at every step, you, my friends, can be intrepid, too.
To make this very long project short here is a list of the errors:
- Sleeve cap decreased worked by flipping the SSK and K2tog. This isn't a big deal but I would have liked it as written instead of what I did. Decision was made to move forward and not rip (I was already knitting the second sleeve) but this may have set the tone for the tempest to come.
- Sleeves had purposely been lengthened by two stripes. I only realized this was an error when they were laid out to block. This error would be easy to fix so I wasn't too upset or worried.
- While sewing the nicely blocked pieces together I picked up the two front pieces, instead of the back, and seamed them together. It was late and I decided it was better to wait and fix in the light of day.
The next day we learned that Charlotte was ill and I knew it was best to leave Tempest alone. After knitting the shawl, and working on a few blanket squares (mindless knitting), I felt ready to tackle Tempest's troubles anew, but the troubles just kept coming.
Picking up along the front and neck bands wasn't too much trouble, but when it came to binding off I had to decide whether I was in the right frame of mind to learn something new. In truth, learning a new knitting techniques isn't my favorite thing. I'll often do what I've always done and go on, but this time I felt learning the sewn bind off was going to make or break the finished look of Tempest.
Knitty is very good at explaining how to do a technique and so, I followed the link and printed off the article. The sewn bind off is at the bottom of the page and it was well worth the effort to learn. However, I was a bit daunted when it said the length needed to execute was three times longer than the edge to be bound off and I just had this feeling I was in for a bumpy ride.
I pulled off way more than I thought I'd need (to go up one side, around the neck and down the other side of the sweater), but also hexed myself by saying I'd be 10 stitches short and that is exactly what happened!
It didn't take long to get into a rhythm when working the sewn bind off and I was very pleased with myself for learning this very beautiful and useful technique. (I'll be using it again.) I was not in the least surprised to find the yarn was too short to work the last ten stitches, but to my delight, Ranco spit/splices perfectly. Whew! Disaster alleviated.
Now it was time to face the music on the sleeves. I cut off the four offending stripes picked up the live stitches and knit a few rows of garter stitch down. The sleeves looked great and the seaming, while carefully matching the stripes, went smoothly and beautifully. In short order the sweater was completed and looked fabulous. To my amazement it fit perfectly, too! But, as I crawled into bed that night I realized I had cut off FOUR stripes…not the offending TWO stripes. Now I'm worried the sleeves will look to short. Come back tomorrow and tell me what you think.
