a scary halloween story

So. As I mentioned in my last entry, I’ve had a lot of time to knit lately. And a lot of that knitting time has been spent working on my Plain and Simple sweater. It is made of sock yarn. On 3mm needles.

Anyway. On Saturday, I had a chance to sit down and finish the body of the sweater, so that it was all ready to try on for fit. My goal for this sweater was to make something that fit really nicely, that looked put together enough that I could wear it to work. Before starting, I did a whole bunch of math and diagrams and stuff.

I was really, really excited.

I don’t know if it’s 100% clear from these photos, but – this sweater does not fit really nicely. There’s way too much positive ease for my taste, and that’s even before blocking. I also followed the pattern directions for body length, but didn’t take into account where I’d done my waist shaping, so the darts for waist and bust increases and decreases (which you cannot see, because there is too much positive ease for them to make a difference) are about four inches too low, on both counts.

Also, the yoke is too big.

So I went back to my gauge swatch, and remeasured. Turns out, I thought my gauge was 7 spi, as in the pattern, but on remeasuring it’s closer to 6.8 spi. Over 280 stitches, that’s actually a pretty big difference.

On Sunday night, I took a really deep breath, put on Shaun of the Dead, and frogged the entire body. Two and a half skeins of Merino Sock.

Then I cast on again. I think I’m growing as a person.