The frill of it

As you know I’m currently working on my first design project - adapting Candy, a pattern that featured in the May 2008 issue of Let’s Knit (it’s on Ravelry here, for those with an account).

The changes I’m making aren’t huge - a V neck rather than scoop, 4-ply yarn instead of double knit, changing the colour of the yarn at the stocking stitch part to match the accents around the hem, cuffs and neck, and putting in a frill at the hem and cuffs. But I think that’s enough for a first foray into design.

Taking the measure
Now, I’m usually a ‘chuck it all in and hope for the best’ kind of girl; a philosophy I apply to everything from packing to cooking. It’s always seen me good in the past. So I was rather surprised at my methodical approach to this design. I decided exactly where I want the hem to fall - a couple of inches below the waistband of my jeans - measured myself, knitted a tension square and measured the width of a top that was the right length to be sure of the size. Using all this information, I calculated exactly how many stitches I’d need.

Next, I wanted to make the hem looser than the ‘bodice’ as it were (the 2x2 rib). I thought I’d achieve this with a 3x3 rib. This meant that my stitches had to be divisible by two and three. Luckily 144 is and it’s very close to the number I’d found I needed. Time to start knitting.

It didn’t work. The 3x3 rib certainly wasn’t looser than the 2x2, if anything it was tighter(see Exhibit A below). This wasn’t going to work at all. So I took some spare acrylic and started experimenting. How about a 1x1 rib? No. How about casting on with bigger needles, knitting one row and changing to the smaller needles? Nearly, but not quite.

I was going to have to try something different. What would happen, I wondered, if I cast on several more stitches than I needed, knitted a row and then k2tog every fourth and fifth stitch? It worked. In fact, to make the frill even more, well, frilly, I cast on and knit the first row using big needles then changed to the small needles for the decrease row. Experimentation over, it was time to start again.

And we're off ...
Problem: I didn’t know how many stitches I’d need to cast on so that I’d end up with 144 after decreasing. Divide 144 by four and add the result, 36, to 144 seemed the right thing to do. I still don’t know why this is the right thing to do, but it really is because I counted the whole thing out on paper. To complicate things further, the cast on and first row had to be in colour 1 and the decrease row (and all following rows) were to be in colour 2. But after all the maths, remembering to change colours was easy.

Of course, it’s not all been plain sailing since then. Only last night, having done some 15cm of knitting, I found a mistake about halfway down. It wasn’t a huge mistake - a couple of places where I’d purled instead of knitted and then corrected myself. But I knew it was there, so it had to go. This meant ripping out 7.5cm of knitting, just to correct two wrongly purled stitches. Being a perfectionist isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

And that’s where I am at the moment: reknitting all those ripped out rows. Yes, it’ll take ages, but for me it’s worth it.

Exhibit A. Sorry for the quality of the photo - done at night on my lap.
But you can see the lack of frill.

Much better! Just look at the frill. Frilling! And other bad puns.