jennanddave.com

I'm making great progress on Henry's cable and rib sweater. The back is complete and I'm almost done with the front. I thought by the time I had finished knitting the 16.5" worth of the cable pattern that makes up the back I'd be ready to take a nice long break from this project, but instead I immediately cast on for the front. I'd show you pictures but I can't seem to locate the camera.

There were a couple of hours worth of knitting excitment that took place Monday night that was pure Jenn. For the size I'm making, I cast on 98 stitches, then knit up to a certain length on the front, after which I knit 38 stitches following the pattern, turned, and then worked those 38 stitches until the length matched that of the back. Then I had to go back to the row I first took the 38 stitches from, bind off 24, then work the other side of the front the same as the first side. No problem. Except when I counted how many stitches I was going to have left after casting off the center 24 stitches, I came up with 36. I thought that was pretty weird, because then the two sides wouldn't match. I decided that there was probably a mistake and that I'm only supposed to cast off 22 stitches at the center front, except I can't just go ahead and make that kind of earth-shattering decision on my own without checking online to make sure that yes there was a mistake in the pattern and that other people out there bound off only 22 stitches without having their sweaters spontaneously combust. So the next hour was spent alternately scrutinizing people's pictures of their Cable and Rib Sweaters to see if their fronts looked even and going back into the living room to curse over the pattern. To add even more fuel to my fire of unwillingness to just go ahead and cast off 22 instead of 24 stitches already was the fact that Debbie Bliss's website doesn't show any revisions for this particular pattern on her errata page. So it must be right, right? I went back and calculated how many stitches were supposed to be on both sides of the front for the other sizes and found they were all even. So finally I sucked it up and cast off 22. Then I exhaled and worked a couple of rows. Then I went to bed because, man, was that exhausting.

I like to follow the rules, especially when it comes to patterns, because although I feel like I know what I'm doing, I'm still not entirely certain that my changing one tiny little thing is going to screw up something much later in the pattern. Unfortunately, my desire for perfection is equal to my desire to not mess with the pattern, which is why Monday was a bit of a nightmare. Every time I decided to cast off 22 stitches, I was worried I was messing up the pattern. On the other hand, every time I decided to cast off 24, I was irritated that the sides were going to be two different widths. It was like a perfect storm.