My Knit Nite buddy, Tena is busy working on her second Gramps sweater. And she has really selected some beautiful colours for both sweaters. When they're done, Tena's agreed to let me photograph them. Trust me it will be well worth the wait.
I mentioned before but it worth reiterating, Tena's knitting is very precise. It is just beautiful work to behold; her tension is perfect and standards are high. Additionally, Tena takes stitch counts deadly seriously whereas I see them as guidelines or signposts not absolutes.
So a week or so ago when Tena came to a point in the sweater where she should have 173 stitches and had only 141 she was understandably concerned. (Even I would find a shortfall of over 30 stitches a problem.) She spent considerable time recounting to determine if the mistake had to do with counting (it did not), she reviewed the instructions to make sure she was actually at the point she should be (she was). We then started trying to problem solve together.
Since she had both the sweater made in class and the one she was working on we could compare the two and realized they were exactly the same. After I counted the stitches on the sweater made in class I estimated there were about 32 stitches missing on that sweater as well. We looked at repeats and tried to figure out what was wrong. I came up with this cockamamie idea about repeats, blah, blah bah, and although my mathematics worked, it made no sense with regard to the instructions. But this sidetrack did help Tena find the problem. She located in the instruction, written in bold letters, a phrase that said in addition to making extra stitches in certain areas, it was necessary to increase stitches at the start and end of certain rows as well. She hadn't done those increases and thus the mistake was located.
The amazing part was she then remembered making the same mistake in May and the instructor had told her to just move on and not worry about it. We looked at the sweaters, talking our way through the implications of the 30 or so stitch shortfall and talked ourselves into believing it would be OK. Tena left unhappy about this turn of events but committed to move on with the second sweater without ripping it out. So last night I was able to see how far she'd come and found in fact she had moved forward without making any changes.
The most reassuring thing in all of this for me is that even someone with much more exacting attention to detail and higher standards for knitting than I have, can make mistakes similar to the type of mistakes I make. I know, it is a terrible thing, but misery likes company. (And in the end, those who receive these two magnificent sweaters, won't know there's anything wrong with them at all.)
And now on to arguably the more important segment of this post. Want to know the colours that will be in for Spring 2013; check out this chart from Pantone. (Read all the way down on the hyperlink to the discussion about the colour of the year.) These colours are used in fashion, interior design, printing to name a few, and yes, yarn.
I mentioned before but it worth reiterating, Tena's knitting is very precise. It is just beautiful work to behold; her tension is perfect and standards are high. Additionally, Tena takes stitch counts deadly seriously whereas I see them as guidelines or signposts not absolutes.
So a week or so ago when Tena came to a point in the sweater where she should have 173 stitches and had only 141 she was understandably concerned. (Even I would find a shortfall of over 30 stitches a problem.) She spent considerable time recounting to determine if the mistake had to do with counting (it did not), she reviewed the instructions to make sure she was actually at the point she should be (she was). We then started trying to problem solve together.
Since she had both the sweater made in class and the one she was working on we could compare the two and realized they were exactly the same. After I counted the stitches on the sweater made in class I estimated there were about 32 stitches missing on that sweater as well. We looked at repeats and tried to figure out what was wrong. I came up with this cockamamie idea about repeats, blah, blah bah, and although my mathematics worked, it made no sense with regard to the instructions. But this sidetrack did help Tena find the problem. She located in the instruction, written in bold letters, a phrase that said in addition to making extra stitches in certain areas, it was necessary to increase stitches at the start and end of certain rows as well. She hadn't done those increases and thus the mistake was located.
The amazing part was she then remembered making the same mistake in May and the instructor had told her to just move on and not worry about it. We looked at the sweaters, talking our way through the implications of the 30 or so stitch shortfall and talked ourselves into believing it would be OK. Tena left unhappy about this turn of events but committed to move on with the second sweater without ripping it out. So last night I was able to see how far she'd come and found in fact she had moved forward without making any changes.
The most reassuring thing in all of this for me is that even someone with much more exacting attention to detail and higher standards for knitting than I have, can make mistakes similar to the type of mistakes I make. I know, it is a terrible thing, but misery likes company. (And in the end, those who receive these two magnificent sweaters, won't know there's anything wrong with them at all.)
And now on to arguably the more important segment of this post. Want to know the colours that will be in for Spring 2013; check out this chart from Pantone. (Read all the way down on the hyperlink to the discussion about the colour of the year.) These colours are used in fashion, interior design, printing to name a few, and yes, yarn.
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| Pantone's Colours for Spring 2013 |
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