Or I am the Anti-Knit.

Or Worst Blog Post Ever.

Anytime we plan a special getaway to the cottage, I try to infuse a sense of renewal to my knitting pile, by starting a special getaway knitting project.

The Baby Williamsbro was to be that project for last weekend.. ::Okay, its real name is Williamsro but I like Williamsbro better.::



The pattern in question calls for two different Noro yarns, Iroho and Blossom, both of which are worked on size 8 needles. I decided not to use the Noro yarns in a sweater for my five-year old, for obvious reasons.

Anyway.

Instead of the Noro yarns, I'm using Encore. I like the Encore because it's soft, washable, comes in a variety of variegations, plays well with size 8 needles and the yarn store near the cottage has the largest selection of Encore that I've seen.

So, Saturday morning I took my pattern book to the yarn store, so that the nice yarn lady there can help me with the Noro-to-Plymouth conversion, ::I hear you all choking on sacrilege outrage.:: and left the store with what I thought was a lovely combo.

::I realize this tale is about as interesting as watching teats crack on a dairy cow. I promise, it won’t be getting any better.::

When I got back to the cottage, I cast on for the back. Because I wasn't using the proper yarns, I didn't follow the directions using the proper yarn names. I went by the picture. In the picture, the variegated yarn is on the bottom, so that's what started with.

Over the course of the afternoon, I completed about 5 inches of cabling, in the colorful yarn. When I checked the directions to see how much longer I had until the color switch, I was a bit alarmed to read that I was to continue the pattern to the armhole.

Before I go any further, I need to confess that unless I'm knitting something like a footbridge for pregnant women and children of The Rainforest, or a neo-natal ventilator, or an algebraic DNA modifier or any item in which faulty construction could have dire, if not lethal consequences, I NEVER read through a pattern first. K?

Sensing an impending, life-threatening danger, which included my own personal safety and that of a nearby, unopened bottle of wine,I read the pattern through. It was only then that I learned that the colorful, bottom part of the sweater is supposed to be a done in a thick, chunky yarn ::on size 8 needles?:: and is added after the rest of the body is done, by picking up 190 stitches around the bottom.

Problem,we have a Houston.

So I ripped.

And then I got to fiddling, with two things on my mind:
1) I do not want to pick up 190 stitches at the end of the sweater, because it is a skill at which I suck mightily.
2) Because I’m not using the proper yarn-weight, the final, resulting fabric may not be exactly what the designer envisioned.
3) I can’t count for shit and I really do not want to pick up 190 stitches in order to finish the sweater.

Long story longer, I spent most of Saturday and Sunday trying to make the worsted, variegated and mostly acrylic Encore, look the part of the Noro Blossom while precluding the need to pick up 190,000,467 stitches at the end.

The results were less than ideal, and more like 7 miles of ripely pimpled ass.

And then I had a great idea. Why not recreate my original mistake and just knit the damn thing all in cable? I mean, back in much happier times, when I was knitting it wrong without knowing it was wrong, it looked all right to me.

Is that so wrong?

And it's not like The Cakers is going to be pointing out the mistake every time someone gives her compliment on the sweater ::No, ‘cause that'll be me.:: Nor will she carry the pattern book to school in her backpack, so she can show her friends how it's really supposed to look :: because I wouldn’t be at all surprised if that little piece of evidence pattern book mysteriously disappeared for a few years.::.

So that's what I did.
And it went something like this:


I did modify the pattern a bit this time, by 86’ing the 8 stitch cables. On my first rightly wrong run, the big cables turned out kind of floppy. On the variegated yarn, they looked like the wings of a Peter Maxi-pad.

But now I’m thinking it’s going to be all right.

Don’t you just love it when a good plan sours to the point where all you can do is puke and hurl and retch and heave until there is nothing left but the will to die, but then it’s finally over, and you feel so good about feeling better, that despite the horrible taste in your mouth and your sore abdominal muscles, you feel nothing but relief at being alive to enjoy yet another day of knitting stupid?

Me too.

P.S. I’ve been putting off publishing this post until I could show a picture of what I have so far, with both yarn colors, but an inch into the new color, I had to rip her back. And it’s almost Friday. And Mercury’s in wet degrade. And I need to move on.

Labels: If Knitting You is Wrong I Don't Want to Be Right