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 . . .

The top-down sweater

For some reason recently, I always seem to spell sweater as “sweather” the first time I type it – if that’s a Freudian slip, I’m not really sure what it means. . .

My latest knitting project is a sweater for a niece’s 4-year old step-son. I made an afghan for her new baby, and I want to make sure that LS knows that it isn’t just the new baby who gets special attention. Of course, they live around 1500 miles away, which means we don’t get to give them personal attention very often, so making things for them is about the only way to let them know we’re thinking of them.

I’ve never done a top-down sweater before, and I’ve also never made a seamless sweater, either. So far I’m really pleased with both techniques. I tried converting a lace-patterned baby top from a seamed garment to an in-the round pattern, and although I got it right in terms of keeping the pattern, because I was working it in the round, it started to skew the lace. I later read somewhere why that happens, but I haven’t been able to find the reference again, and my brain is like a backless drawer – the more I put in the front, the more stuff falls out the back.

At any rate, here is a picture of the sweater before I started the split for the side slits. I think I’ll have the body done by mid-next week, then I’ll start on the sleeves, and the hood will be last.

face-on view

side view

I’m a little bit worried about the cotton yarn – Blue Sky Organic Cotton. It’s lovely to work with, and machine washable/dryable, so I’m hoping that it will be easy-care for a young mother with two children, who also works; but a friend suggested that it will stre-e-e-tch badly. I’ve heard about this being a problem with some yarns, and indeed, had the problem with the aforementioned baby afghan.

baby afghan using Rowan Classic Cashsoft Baby DK

This afghan was made with Rowan Classic Cashsoft Baby DK. A simple strip afghan made with garter stitch, using the “Circle of Friends” pattern from “Last-Minute Knitted Gifts”; and I carried it with me to work on pretty much wherever I was going. I found that, if I happened to be standing rather than sitting while I was knitting, I had to loop the strip over my arm to keep the weight of the strip from stretching it all out of gauge as the strip got longer. And once I sewed the strips together, the weight of the afghan dragged out the middle and top, and the sides stayed relatively in-gauge. So I tried blocking it three times, and each time, the same stretching action happened. I wasn’t terribly pleased with the end result, although working with the Cashsoft was a lovely feeling – it was soft, slid nicely on the needles, and perhaps with stockinette stitch, or some other pattern than plain garter, it wouldn’t stretch so badly.

I’m really jonesing to start a lace project – I’ve got a sock pattern that I’ve adapted to a scarf, and I plan to make it with Kidsilk Haze. Hmmm. Lace socks are made in the round, so why don’t the lace patterns skew there?

I should probably finish the sweater for Brian – I’ve finished the back, and nearly finished the front. I’m using Lion Brand Homespun in Candy Apple Red. But it takes up a lot more room in my bag and is a lot heavier, and right now I’m trying to limit how much I’m carrying because I’m not supposed to carry a bag on my shoulder during the radiation treatment. Afterwards, maybe, although they really don’t want me to.

The other piece I need to finish is a Fair Isle hat, but because of the yarn colors, I find that I really need good direct lighting to work on it, so carrying it around is wasted effort.

Once I’ve finished the crib quilt, I’ll pick up one of these as my “home” project, and carry the scarf or a new Fair Isle project.

Or perhaps this – the other thing that is on-needle is a cabled pillow cover by Jo Sharp – I don’t really remember why I put this down, although I seem to recall that the cables were kind of a pain – I mean, they’re just regular cables, but they were wide, and the cross-over was puckering the fabric. Maybe that’ll be a good one to carry with me. . .