Adventures in Tanis Gray's Short Sleeved Cardigan

Summer Vogue Knitting 2009 is on the stands and I love it. I settled on Tanis Gray's Short Sleeved Cardigan. It is beautiful and sassy. It's dreamy.

It's also a tongue twister and a riddle! Let me qualify that by saying it is for me. As Prince would say, "It's the Beautiful Ones..."

I don't have pictures to show of my progress because I have been knitting and ripping for about 1.5 weeks add to that another week of trying to get gauge and master the repeats triton lace pattern and the gauge on the wavy lace pattern which is the heart of the tongue twister. It is series of yo's and SKP and S2KPs that if you aren't careful...Arggggh!

But this is a lesson in patience and hard work and I'm ready, I think. This post is an official encouragement to me. Keep it moving Kaye!

The pattern calls for Jade Sapphire's Silk Cashmere. I'm using Debbie Bliss' Prima, which is 80% Bamboo and 20% Wool. The color is this amazing teal, 35715. The yarn feels soft and the color is rich. However, I realized that I don't really like knitting with Debbie Bliss yarns because I always experience splitting. My gauge swatch has several areas where the needle went straight through the yarn and only caught a part of it coming back through the loop. And, as I knit this piece, which is a series of K3tog and PSSO and SKP, well you get the picture, it is slowing me down as I try and avoid and/or fix splitting fiber. It's the Beautiful Ones.

Now, when I did my gauge, I knitted the wavy lace pattern at 29sts/26 rows at 3.5" instead of 4." However, the garter stitch was exactly 4" as the pattern calls.
The triton lace pattern, the other pattern for the sweater (there are three total), came out to 4" as well. Since the bodice is sewn separately to the front, it was recommended to me that I knit the wavy lace pattern portion at the larger size and in so doing, that part would actually come out to "size." The hiccup came when the pattern uses the same number of cast ons for the first four sizes! Add to that the work, when completed, will be turned 90 degrees so the knitted x-axis is actually y when completed. Arggh, the beautiful ones.

So, off I went, and ripped out it was, five times over. Last night I got my pencil and tried hard to figure out the math. The pattern repeat is 15 stitches plus 1! I decided to decrease from 91 cast on to 76. I think it is working, but I can't tell because I keep messing up the pattern repeats! As I muttered to myself walking to work after another frustrating rip out on the Metra train this morning, I had an idea...try placing stitch markers at the end of each pattern repeat so if I make a mistake I can see where it was. It worked. Tonight I got see that I messed up the second repeat. Dang.

I'm going to get this sweater finished. It's the beautiful ones.