Grrr!

Well, I’m quite annoyed at Jo Sharp.

I started working on the cabled pillow cover again, after it had been set aside for so long:

Cabled Pillow cover - Jo Sharp pattern

As I neared the end of the first of four skeins of yarn, I realized that I was barely 1/3 done with the *front* of the cover, but I should have been at least 2/3 done.

I grabbed my tape measure and checked and rechecked my guage – everything was coming out exact, so what is the problem? Well, the larger size called for 7 balls, and the smaller size only called for 4, but it wasn’t *that* much smaller – maybe Jo Sharp made a mistake on the quantity of skeins?

Worse than that. I did an online search, found the Jo Sharp home page, and after having to search for errata, discovered that Jo Sharp printed the wrong yarn type – instead of Silkroad Aran Tweed, it should have been Silkroad DK Tweed, which has almost 50 yards more per skein, as well as being sportweight versus heavy worsted. Grrr!

I should have realized something was up when I was getting the perfect guage with the needles the instructions called for – I usually have to go up at least one size, sometimes 2.

Since this is a stash diet year, rather than biting the bullet and purchasing more of the yarn (I figure I could use a not-quite-exact dye lot for the back, if I were going that route), I am frogging it and will come up with something else to do with the 400 yds or so of Silkroad Aran Tweed yarn that is now back in my stash instead of being a UFO.

This wasn’t the way I intended to work my way through the UFOs, though.

As a warning for anyone interested in Jo Sharp pattern books, let the buyer beware. Of the couple dozen books listed on her website, *all* of them have errata, and it looks as if most of them have several patterns that have corrections listed – and if you read the fine print, you’ll see that these are just the ones that they’ve admitted have problems – you can’t contact JoSharp.com directly with a possible correction – you have to go through your LYS, who then contacts JS.com, who reviews it, and *if* they decide there is a problem, they will get back to your LYS, who then has to get back to you. And presumably then they’ll publish it on their website. My Jo Sharp Contemporary Knitting 2 book has essentially 1/3 of all the patterns requiring corrections.

I’d say they need to do a better job checking their patterns.

But in the meantime, before I pick up another WIP, I’ve started (just in my head, so far) designing a cabled scarf  that will use up the yarn – since we’re getting out of heavy scarf weather, I probably won’t work on it too much right now, although if I can get a basic pattern planned, I can pick it up later this summer for a Christmas gift for Brian, maybe.

Guess that’s one way to get a UFO off the books . . .

“Variations on Bonnie” loomed bracelet

This bracelet is a loomed piece, with beads strung on the warp threads, and an “endless” warping. The class was taught at Beads at Dusti Creek by Lynn D. A picture of the class sample is below:

class sample

The bracelet went fast – we warped the loom and completed 3/4 of the looming during a 4 hour class (including lunch) – I finished the looming and pulled the warp thread in an additional hour.

The problem is that either I misunderstood what Lynn said about which size to make, or else she forgot that she modified the pattern. Following the pattern repeats to get the largest size, which was supposed to be the same size as the class sample (and would fit someone with a medium to large wrist), my bracelet came out so that it was at least an inch-and-a-half too long. Looking at my version and comparing it to the class sample, I see that mine has 3 extra rows of bugles, as well as the corresponding loomed rows in between.

Oversized!

The plan is to put the button on one end and add a netted loop to fasten the bracelet. Since it is so long, and unlooming it is out of the question, I’m going to add netting to each end, use a beaded bead and loop to fasten it, and put the button smack-dab in the middle, and convert it to a choker.

Next time, I’ll know better – I’ve already got the beads and buttons to make another one, so I’ll fiddle with the pattern repeats until I come up with the right size to make a bracelet that fits ;-}

p.s. sorry about the picture quality – I’m working on improving my photography. . .