Feb 4th, 2008
A disaster
For Christmas last year, my friends Gina and Todd gave me some yarn and a pattern book from Green Mountain Spinnery. After much thought, I decided to make the Artisan Vest in that book, using the Double Twist yarn called for.
The smallest size in the book is for a 36″ chest. That’s a bit larger than what I wanted, so I did some math and modified the pattern to make it fit me better. So instead of casting on 180 stitches, I cast on 160. And I counted them three times before starting to knit.
Or so I thought. After a week and a half of merrily knitting along (this vest is worked in one piece from the bottom up), Saturday afternoon I found that I’d reached 10″ and was ready to divide the piece. I knit the right front and put those stitches on a holder. I bound off for the right armhole. I knit across the back. I put the left front stitches on a holder. Then I bound off for the left armhole. And then I thought, “Gosh, there’s an awful lot of stitches left on my needles for the back.”
So I counted them. And I counted them again. And I undid all of the bound-off stitches and worked back to right before I started to divide the piece…and I counted again.
Somehow, instead of 160 stitches, I had 194. How this happened, I have no idea. Like I said, I triple-checked the number of my cast-on stitches. The number 194 doesn’t appear anywhere in the pattern, so it’s not like I accidentally followed the wrong line. And I haven’t added stitches anywhere—my rows are beautifully tidy all the way up.
The only solution, I’m afraid, is to rip out the whole thing and start over. Yes, it’s a fair amount of knitting on size 6 needles. But it’s “mindless” knitting—the kind I can easily do while chatting with friends or watching a movie. So I’m sure I’ll be back to this point in no time—and this time around, I’ll have the correct number of cast-on stitches. I plan to quadruple check them this time. And I’ll make Jan count ’em for me, too.
8 Responses to “A disaster”
I feel your pain. I once tried to make a vest (bottom up, like yours), and the number of stitches just wouldn’t remain stable. I eventually gave up. I’m sending any good knitting karma I have your way!
What the heck?! Maybe you have gremlins…
Oh man, I’m sorry to hear that. Good thing you’re a quick knitter!
Like I said, I’m really not sure what happened here. Math has never been my strong suit. I do like that gremlins hypothesis, though…
Gremlins might be the only explanation, especially if you counted it 3 times. Oh I’m so sorry you have to frog it! I’ll count them for you the next time too, if you want!
I was at Hobby Lobby searching for frames and thought of you when I saw all of the yarn. :)
Everytime I think I’m smarter than the pattern, this is *exactly* what happens to me — the pattern thumbs it nose and laughs at me.
Oh, I definitely learned my lesson here: don’t get uppity about your knitting.