Knitter in the Kitchen

About two weeks ago, I blocked the cable bands for my Kepler Sweater. When I removed them from my blocking board, I noticed that some of the color had run onto the board. I thought to myself, the color didn’t run when I blocked my swatch, so why did it run now? Other than being disappointed because this was the first time I stained my board, I didn’t think too much more about it.

I moved on to knitting the front, back, and sleeves. I just finished knitting the sweater this morning and even did a three-needle bind-off for the shoulder seams. I was quite excited. I decided to give the sweater parts a Eucalan bath in my washer before blocking. That way, if any more color ran (and I wasn’t expecting that much to run), it could run in the washer and not ruin my board. So I dumped the parts in cold water and left them alone for 15 minutes.

What did I find when I returned? The water in the washer was purple. Not light lavender, but purple. I was horrified and didn’t quite know what to do. I ended up bringing the parts up to the bathtub to rinse them some more. And believe me, I rinsed for a good long time. The water never ran completely clear, either. I just settled for a hint of purple. Has anyone else had this problem with dark shades of Jaeger Shetland Aran?

I thought about my gauge swatch again and suddenly it hit me why the color on my swatch didn’t run. Because I didn’t knit a swatch in this color. I also have the Jaeger Shetland Aran in hot pink, which is what I used for my swatch. Duh! Maybe I don’t have a brain? *sigh* This is an excellent reason why one should always knit and block a swatch in the actual color that one plans to use.

So after I finally finished rinsing and drying the parts, I pinned them down. The Kepler pattern has a lovely schematic and I tried to follow the measurements. I did the best I could but somehow it just doesn’t look right to me. I can’t get the parts to look symmetrical. Plus I think I might have stretched the front and back out too much when I was rinsing them. I have an awful feeling that the sleeves won’t fit properly into the armholes and that the entire project will go down the tubes. I don’t have a lot of experience with knitting garments — the only other ones I’ve knit are the Klaralund Sweater (which doesn’t have shaping and is composed entirely of rectangular parts) and the Tivoli Tee (which wasn’t hard to block at all).

Right now I feel very discouraged and don’t want to go anywhere near this sweater. I had planned to read up on seaming while my sweater was on the board, but I’m not excited about it anymore. I’m wondering if I should even knit the Freida Sweater or the Salina Sweater as I had planned? Maybe I should go knit myself an easy scarf instead.

Thanks for listening.

I finished the cable bands for Kepler – two for the sleeves, two for the hips.

Of course, I experienced a tad bit of drama with the cable bands. I had been working from the chart and didn’t look much at the pattern. Right after I started the last cable band, I glanced over at the pattern and realized that I skipped over some directions. I was supposed to knit two seaming rows prior to binding off each band, and I failed to do that for all three of the completed bands. Oops. But I thought to myself, no problem. I can un-do the bind off, add the seaming rows, and then bind off again. A dumb mistake, but no big deal, right?

I grabbed one of the sleeve bands and ripped back a couple rows. I started re-knitting the ripped rows, but clearly something was wrong because the cables were now twisted incorrectly. Hmmm, did I pick up stitches out of order? I pulled them off the needles, ripped back some more, and started again. It was still wrong. Throughout the course of the day, I probably spent a total of two hours trying to figure out why this one cable band was so messed up. Eventually I reached my frustration limit and gave up on fixing it. I decided to go forward with knitting the last cable band. My plan was that when I reached row 10 of the pattern, I would compare it to row 10 of the messed up band currently on a stitch holder. That way I could figure out exactly what was wrong.

Guess what? There was NO way that the cable band on the holder was at row 10. Definitely, totally not. So, either I miscounted the rows when I was ripping back, or I made a mistake in the original knitting. I ripped back until this band matched row 10 of the correct band, and continued from there. And then all was good. Whew!

Now I am working on a sleeve.

Many thanks to Minna for clarifying the increase directions. Apparently I can’t read…I thought that the directions said to increase 1 stitch at the end of each RS row. That couldn’t be right because then the sleeve would be asymmetrical! Duh, the directions said to increase at each end of the RS row.

Note to self: Read the directions very carefully. Then read them again. And read them one more time before binding off!

Once I got into a groove (which was after the bust section), Tivoli went fairly quickly. As you might recall, I started with the 28-inch size, but it was much too small. So I switched to the 32-inch size, all the while afraid that it would turn out too big. It is a little bit loose, but it’s not overly baggy and I think I can get away with it. One reason is that my gauge was too tight. Guess my swatch wasn’t that accurate. (Well, I did use a different color yarn and knit it flat, so I’m not entirely surprised.)

There are a couple of technique questions I have related to Tivoli. First of all, my SSK decreases look horrid. Blocking didn’t do much for it.

My first thought was that maybe SSK is a relatively “messier” decrease? I did SKPs with my Sophie Bags and they looked just fine. So after 3 decreases using SSK, I switched over to SKP. I didn’t notice any difference at all. I swear that my SKP decreases with Sophie don’t look all jagged like that!! They look neat, just like my k2togs. Can I blame the messiness on cotton versus wool, or is there some other reason? I looked on Knitting Help, and Amy shows an “SSK improved” where you slip the first stitch knitwise and the second one purlwise. Have any of you tried this SSK?

The second issue is with the M1 increases. I checked Vogue Knitting to make sure that I did the M1Rs and M1Ls correctly. Vogue Knitting claims that these two increases are “practically invisible.”

I see holes and a jagged line, so I don’t know that I would describe the increases as invisible. Perhaps the operative word is “practically”? Does everyone else have holes with M1s? Or do you use a different type of increase? Jen and I had a brief discussion over email, and she suggested using raised increases instead.

In spite of my less-than-perfect decreases and increases, I’m happy with Tivoli! I should get to wear her a few times before the weather turns cold!