07 September 2009

yarny destiny

There are often times I wonder about yarn and whether it really wants to "become" what I have planned for it. Yeah, I know. I'm weird. But when it takes me five tries to get past the cast-on and bottom edge of a sweater, I think of things like that.

Meet some gorgeous, girly versions of Cobblestone:

girly cobblestone inspiration

I liked the pattern from the moment I saw it, but theboy declared it "too much" for himself. I can see what he means. Then I saw one of these, and fell in love. I knew it would be a perfect sweater for me, and might be perfect for some yarn I had laying around: a sweater's worth of the new LB Cotton Ease in Stone.

DSCN1190.jpg

I swatched for it months ago, and (of-fucking-course), forgot what size needles it was on. Side note: I remember knitting the swatch and thinking about the trick where you make YOs in the same number as the size of needle being used, and decided not to do it. Bad decision! Based on the swatch, I guessed that I used a US #8. WRONG! I ended up with a sweater with ten inches of positive ease. Which is twelve inches too many. I realize I did the swatch on #6s. Frog. Cast on again, and knit a few inches. Realize it's still too big. Frog. Re-think it, and decide to add waist shaping, but use the same numbers. Do my waist decrease math incorrectly. (I forgot that you decrease in four places in the round, not just two like you would flat!) Realize that, and frog. Re-do math, and divide incorrectly. (19/4 does not equal 3.75!) Cast on again, with wrong number of stitches. Knit for about four inches. Realize it's now going to be way too small. Frog again.

Then I thought the whole thing through again. Almost re-designed it from the top-down since I think bottom-up sweaters are silly. Give up, because I don't want to do another shit-ton of math and just do simpler math to make it still bottom-up. I've cast on for the FIFTH time, and this will be the last. If this doesn't work, I will chalk it up to the fact that this yarn does not want to be Cobblestone. (Did I mention I already knit another top with this yarn and decided I didn't like it and frogged? Yeah.)


cobblestone. fourth try.

Cross your fingers for me. I'm just about to start the stockinette portion of the body.