Update: where's my knits at?

A look at the projects I’m currently working on

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I’m working on four projects at the moment, two of which have been on the back burner for a while. Here’s where I’m up to.

Baby jacket

It might look a bit like a spider, but it's actually a baby jacket.

This is what I’ve been working on most recently. It’s not going so well. As it’s a jacket there are five separate pieces: the back, two fronts and two sleeves. So far all five pieces are different lengths, and I’m not convinced any of them are the right length. It also seems a bit small. I’m making the 6-12 months size and it fits the measurements given, but it’s very little. But then I guess babies are still little at that age. I’ve checked out some sizing charts and compared it to baby clothes in BHS, and it seems to be the right size.

The different length pieces are more problematic. I’m not really happy with any of them, and while it’s possible I could fix them with blocking, I don’t really want to do that. Which means I’m going to have to undo them all and reknit them to make them the right length.

This is a lesson on why gauge is so important, and how difficult it can be to achieve. I did, of course, do a swatch before starting the jacket and the problem I had was that my tension was spot on widthways (number of stitches), but different lengthways (number of rows). So I had the exact number of stitches in my 10cm square, but too many rows (32 instead of 28). I don’t actually know how to fix this. If I upped the needle size then my stitches would no longer have worked, but if I don’t then my rows don’t work.

Usually the number of stitches is far more important than the rows – if your rows are too tight, like mine, then you simply knit more, if they’re too loose, then you knit fewer, you lucky thing. But this particular piece has raglan sleeves, so needs a nice even decrease along all the separate sections. This means the number of rows knitted becomes rather significant. All I could think of doing was to add in a few rows at regular intervals where I don’t decrease in order to make the raglans longer but still even. The problem with this is that I pretty much had to guess how many extra rows would be needed. My first guess was clearly wrong and the pieces were too short. So now I need to undo them all right to the beginning of the raglan shaping and add in a couple of extra extra rows.

Jane Deep V sweater

The back of my Jane Deep V sweater.
I'm pretty much up to the neck shaping.

This is one of my own designs that’s been languishing. I’ve completed the front but I’ve kind of got stuck on the back. I gave up on it for a while after having to undo about 30cm having found a mistake. I could have left it, I guess, but that’s just not the way I do things. I was right up to the neck shaping and had to undo it almost to the start. It was pretty demoralising.

The back is a simple stocking stitch, though, so reknitting won’t take too long and I have already completed a significant chunk of it. This does raise an interesting question though. I could easily have left this mistake. I had k2tog where I should simply have knitted. I was one stitch out. One. If I was using a chunky yarn that one stitch might have made a difference, but I’m knitting with 4-ply. All I had to do was decrease by one fewer stitch than I’d expected to at the neckline and it all would have been fine. So is it best just leave such mistakes or should you go back and correct them?

I shall take the finished blanket on many sunny, champagne-fuelled picnics

I always do the latter. I hate knowing there’s something wrong in my knitting. But this is time consuming and can be really quite demoralising if I’ve knitted a lot after having made the mistake. It would surely be better for my sanity if I were to leave such mistakes, but I just don’t think I’ll ever be that person.

Dress

The back of my dress. It hasn't got a name yet.

I started this ages ago and shelved it in favour of other projects. It’s another of designs and I’ve actually done quite a lot. The front is finished and the back is nearly there. So then it’s just the sleeves. The plan is to do full-length bell sleeves (ones that flare out towards the bottom), or ‘wizard sleeves’, as one of my friends calls them, because wizards’ robes always have flared sleeves. I do love this style of sleeve, although it’s not totally practical when eating soup. I guess wizards don’t eat much soup.











Picnic blanket

Picnic blanket. This will be 2 metres long when finished.
It's going to take some time.

This is the only crochet project I’ve currently got on the go. I started it around the beginning of summer, knowing that it would take ages to complete. As there are so many different colours, it’s not the most portable of projects, but I did take it to Sardinia in June and managed to do quite a bit of work on it then. It’s something that I can easily pick up and put down and I’m planning on having it ready for next summer, when I shall, of course, take it on many sunny, champagne-fuelled picnics.

Postscript
Since writing this, I’ve taken out the Jane sweater and managed to knit right back up to the the neck shaping while on a nice weekend trip to Cambridge. Yay for quiet weekends with the parents!

I’ve also undone and reknitted all the separate pieces for the baby jacket and am now adding the ribbed borders to the two fronts.