Dahlia

I was going to write this entry in the car dealership while waiting for them to diagnose the "weird burning smell" (front axel bearing thingy), but there were too many people in the waiting room to whip out my computer and start typing madly away. I could have knit and people watched too, but these were the most boring people ever. I read my book instead.

I am steadily working away on my Dahlia cardigan, I currently have one side done and I am working towards getting to the other side.

I have had a lot of ups and downs with this sweater. First off the center panel took forever for me to make it past the 7th row. Things kept slipping off the needles or getting twisted or what have you. I conservatively estimate that it took me 20 tries to get past row 7. Then I had trouble because of gauge.

What happened was that because of the construction of the sweater and because the center lace panel turned out so big, it meant that bottom and top panels that I used to check gauge were so tall that the sweater would have been somewhere in the neighborhood of 23 inches from my neck to where it ended. Basically a HUGE droopy sweater. Obviously, I didn't want a huge droopy sweater, so I went and looked really hard at the pattern and figured, hmmm I can kind of wing this! So that's what I did.

If you want to have a better idea of what I'm talking about, you should check out the Interweave knits blog post on it. What I decided was that the little strips that you knit separately and then join to the life stitches of your lace panel to create a huge opening that then becomes the side, well those could be shorter. Like shorter than the smallest size. The only rub would be figureing where the afterthought sleeve should go.

So I eyeballed it.

and I don't think i did terrible, but it wasn't quite what I wanted. So guess what? I ripped it out. And I started over. I left the top section as it was, but I made the bottom section as long as the smallest size. I had the armhole where I wanted it, so I just figured out where that would be with the new size and bam I was knitting. Knitting stockinette over a huge number of stitches.

(Sorry about the picture quality, but I actually want to finish this entry).

I'm now starting to make my way to the other side. Although, I broke one of the needles I was using (sat on it--or rather kneed it) AGAIN. Also the miles of stockinette looming ahead is making me wish for a car trip or something.

Just in time to start using all my free time on Halloween.