Sally and I both want to wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving. We will be spending the day with our families. 🙂
Waking Tide
At my knitters guild presentation, I talked about ripping things out when they did not work. “‘Tis better to rip and reknit now than regret later.” At least, that is my philosophy.
Boy, was that put to the test with this one!!
I have never been so disappointed in the amount of extra effort needed to make a pattern work.
First, I jumped onto the FREE Waking Tide bandwagon because I thought the sweater was cute (and still do). I bought the identical yarn and color for the same reason (though my color looks very little like the original). Once I decided to embark on the sweater, I bought the pattern so that I could have the final version with corrections and project photos. There were no changes that I could see and no photos. Every time I needed to look at a picture, I had to go into Ravelry.
I made several mods to the body of the sweater, which look very nice. One change was to add the sleeves after the yoke so I could make sure of the length. Another was to center the lace motifs, which I believe should have already been done.
I got to the yoke making a size 44 inch (17 lace repeats). I noticed that on most projects the yoke ruffled because there were too many sts. So, I decided to be smart and remove 2 YOs from the top of the lace pattern (34 sts decreased). I took out 2 additional sts so my stitch count would match the next size down. I thought I was brilliant.
It did not work! Still way too ruffley.
So, I ripped it out back to the armholes (!), and removed the 36 sts at the beg of the lace panel (which gave me 15 lace repeats instead of 17). I still removed the 2 YOs at the top of the lace work – another 30 sts decreased for a total of 66 sts removed. I also went down a needle size.
STILL NOT ENOUGH!!
So then I ripped back to the top of the lace panel and removed 60 sts this time (4 per lace repeat). I now had removed 96 sts from the yoke to maintain the size I was making. 96 sts.
I had to adjust the yoke decreases from that point of course, fudging as I went along. It now fits.
I have not finished the sleeves or blocked it yet, but removing a third of the sts to get the thing to work is beyond ridiculous, esp since the lower body fit perfectly. Add the fact that I did not substitute yarn and my gauge matched the pattern specifications, and it makes no sense!
Susan’s Waking Tide in Progress
Someday I will be thankful that I reworked this sucker so many times!!! And hubby is thankful that we have snow in our future! At least a dusting.
PS (11-30-2015): Done and blocking, and it does fit. I guess it was worth the effort – we shall see once it is dry and the buttons are sewn on. I added buttons to both sides!!
