It seems the curse of the paprika wool has struck again. I was merrily knitting along on the big fella’s hybrid when about 8″ into the body I realized it seemed a little wide. His other seamless hybrid was at the drycleaners, so I couldn’t check it for size for a couple of days. Instead I just kept knitting.
When I got the sweater back, I laid them out and definitely the one underway was too wide – about two inches too wide in circumference. Damn. I measured, then remeasured. I counted my gauge again and found it was 18 st/4″, not 19 like I thought (and like the green seamless hybrid). So instead of a 49 or 50 inch finished chest measurement, it was going to be 52″. I also remeasured the big fella and found that the broad ribbing of the green hybrid was really quite flexible in fit. His chest wasn’t as big as I’d thought and the numbers I’d used for the ribbed sweater would actually be too generous for a stocking stitch sweater.
So I made note of the gauge and measurements, then ripped it out. I quite liked the contrasting hem, but in the meantime had been googling and haunting the Rav for examples of how other people did the hem. One school of thought was that you cast on 90% of your K (chest) number, did the inside of the hem, increased that 10%, purled a fold line, then continued in your main colour with the bigger needles. When you go to knit together the cast on edge with the current, live stitches, you have to skip a few live stitches periodically to account for the lesser stitch count of the cast on. One benefit of this is it supposedly lessens the tendency for the hem to flip up.
The other school of thought is that you cast on immediately the 100% of your stitches, but do the inside of the hem on smaller needles and that would help cinch it in and lessen the flipping. That’s what I did the first time, but after I’d laid it out atop the green hybrid, I was worried that it would be too wide and gaping at the bottom.
So when I started attempt #3, not only did I use smaller needles for the inside of the hem, I also cast on 90% stitches, did the increases, switched to main yarn and needles, blah blah blah. It was going along fine until I got to the point where I was knitting the two together when even skipping every 8th or 9th stitch, the outside of the hem was biasing badly. BADLY. I tried to correct it, but wasn’t happy with it, so I ripped it out.
That brings us to the next attempt. I was happily watching a dvd and had cast on with smaller stitches and my 100% stitch count and knit a few rounds. Then I realized I had twisted the cast on (I NEVER do that – never!) so had to rip it back those few rounds and start over. Again. le sigh
When I had lunch with my friend on Thursday, we went to one of our favourite haunts, the place that has those awesome muffins I’ve been trying to recreate. In the interests of science and knowledge, I got two muffins to take home.
I was quite analytical as I devoured this muffin. The batter seems to be more like carrot cake than bran muffin. I didn’t taste any molasses. There are nuts (walnuts or pecans), raisins, carrot shreds and I think apple. Or it might have been zucchini. I didn’t notice the pepitas in the muffin, just sprinkled on top. I can’t get my batter to come out that dark, and I think with all the stuff I’m adding to it, it’s throwing off the scientific percentages of flour to liquid to leavening ingredients.
Definitely more cakey than quick-bread muffin.
I don’t know why my hair keeps coming up so RED. It’s brown. Just like in this pic:
Although that pic was taken in November and I did have an appointment in December to get the colour done. But I see brown when I look in the mirror.
Oh, and look at that. I have no pooper pics today. Just imagine them moping about because of the cold and the absence of the big fella.
Terri's KnitBlog 