a tale of woe and sorrow
Jun. 6th, 2011 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bedlamsbardI am so frustrated with this one knitting pattern, you have no idea. There's a pretty good chance I'm about to rip it out for the fifth (and possibly final) time. I finished my Nemesis socks (Rav link) on Friday night, all except the Kitchener toe, and I left that to do on Saturday morning when I could look at the instructions while I did it. (I have nothing against Kitchener. I love Kitchener! Just, for some reason, I always have to have the instructions up while I do it, despite the fact I've done it more than a dozen times by now.) So I went to fetch another skein of yarn to wind up while we finished watching the first two episodes of Pillars of the Earth (a.k.a., why can't David Oakes play a nice morally upright medieval guy?) and printed out two patterns.
Now, one of them was Poseidon (Rav link) and one of them was Dionysus (no non-Ravelry link, sorry). And I'd bought the yarn I was using (Black Trillium merilon in "Breeze") specifically to do Poseidon. But by the time I was ready to cast on Saturday evening (while watching Breach, if anyone's keeping track), I'd realized that Poseidon was toe-up, and that was something else I'd have to be looking at instructions for. So I cast on for Dionysus instead, which had some problems when I realized that the designer had forgotten to put in the instructions for C6F and C6B in the pattern and I had to run and look them up, as well as the fact that for about fifteen minutes I couldn't figure out why there were red lines on the charts. (For the different sizes, as it happens, but that wasn't written anywhere on the pattern.) But I eventually got most of the cuff done by the time the movie finished and took it upstairs. Where I stared at it. I mean, on some level I felt weird about using a blue yarn for a pattern called "Dionysus", although I told myself it was fine because there's that one story about Dionysus and the dolphins and so on, but mostly I felt weird about using a yarn that had been specifically intended for one pattern for another pattern. When the only thing that was wrong with the other one was that it was toe-up. So I left it overnight, and in the morning I decided that, you know, I was fine with ripping it out and casting on for Poseidon the next day.
So on Sunday, yesterday, while watching LWW, I began to cast on for Poseidon. I have had some spectacular toe-up failures in the past, which is why I always do cuff-down socks. But, you know, the pattern had the short-row toe instructions written in, so I'd just follow that, right? WELL. The short-row toe in the pattern is not that well-written, so it, in fact, results in fairly obvious holes when in practice. (Why yarnovers? Seriously, why yarnovers? More important question: why didn't I just follow the nice tutorial on Knitty?) So I finished the toe, eyeing the holes worriedly and telling myself that I could sew them up later and started in on the pattern. Which is written, not charted. About five rows in I couldn't stand the holes anymore and frogged the entire thing.
At this point you would think I would have learned my lesson about this pattern and given it a rest, but instead I carried it downstairs to watch Vanity Fair after dinner and cast on for the same pattern cuff-down. It's a nice little lacy cable-y pattern that I gambled would look the same upside down as right-side up, so I would do the ribbing, then just work the lace pattern and figure out the heel when I got there; I've done enough socks by now that it wouldn't be that hard to work out a heel flap without the pattern sitting there telling me the numbers. Well, I didn't read the pattern closely enough, just closely enough to see that the stitch count stayed the same between the foot and the leg -- 58 stitches in the round. So I cast on 58 stitches, joined to work in the round, and began to calmly do my K2 P2 ribbing. Only when I got to the 58th stitch, I was on a knit stitch, not a purl stitch, and then I'd have four knit stitches next to each other. So I ripped again, figuring I'd just counted wrong, and did it all over again. Same result. At that point I looked at the pattern more closely, and realized that the cuff doesn't have the same stitch count as the leg; instead, it increases to 60 stitches during the last row of the leg. So I cast on 60 stitches, and this time my ribbing worked out. So today (listening to the Joy the Baker podcast) I started working on the lace pattern. Which is mostly fine, whatever, I can mostly get it to work divided across four DPNs, although I've got a yarnover in a place I don't like to have yarnovers (the first stitch of a new needle). Only there's the fact that you actually have to repeat the odd rounds twice across the leg, which is not something that's ever mentioned in the actual pattern. You don't repeat the lace pattern, you repeat the whole ROUND -- which is made more confusing by the fact that the lace repat is repeated itself within the round, but okay, whatever, I can figure that out, I just had to tink back about twenty stitches, but that's not so bad. Only at some point I decided to look at the project gallery for Poseidon on Ravelry. Which is when I discovered that other people had modified the pattern so that the lace pattern went all the way around the leg -- see, as written, because of the way that the round repeats rather than the lace pattern repeats, you end up with these two long stockinette strips of six stitches down the leg. Which is unnecessary, and also rather unflattering. (This probably would have been obvious if the pattern was charted as well as written, I'm just saying.) I've knit about an inch of the leg, or one and a half repeats of the lace pattern, and that stockinette strip is driving me crazy.
So I think I'm going to frog again, and possibly put the nice ball of yarn away while I knit something else. Dionysus, maybe. I don't know if I feel like tackling Poseidon ever again. Although I bet this yarn would look good in Dionysus. There's a really nice blue Dionysus on Ravelry, and there is that dolphin story, so it's not completely out of left field. (And the yarn still looks really good after being knit and frogged four times, too. I really like Black Trillium; her shop is here and she's got a sale on right now!) If not, well, I've got lots of other yarn in stash. Including a nice skein named Gaia (which...okay, would just feel really weird to use for a pattern called Dionysus) and two skeins of Malabrigo lace earmarked for Juno Regina (Rav link). Wait, am I the one with the problem or are there just a lot of knitters and designers familiar with mythology?
Speaking of...if I was any good at colorwork, I would totally have to make these socks (highlyeccentric, you'll like these!) and these socks.
Anyway. I'm a bit annoyed.
Now, one of them was Poseidon (Rav link) and one of them was Dionysus (no non-Ravelry link, sorry). And I'd bought the yarn I was using (Black Trillium merilon in "Breeze") specifically to do Poseidon. But by the time I was ready to cast on Saturday evening (while watching Breach, if anyone's keeping track), I'd realized that Poseidon was toe-up, and that was something else I'd have to be looking at instructions for. So I cast on for Dionysus instead, which had some problems when I realized that the designer had forgotten to put in the instructions for C6F and C6B in the pattern and I had to run and look them up, as well as the fact that for about fifteen minutes I couldn't figure out why there were red lines on the charts. (For the different sizes, as it happens, but that wasn't written anywhere on the pattern.) But I eventually got most of the cuff done by the time the movie finished and took it upstairs. Where I stared at it. I mean, on some level I felt weird about using a blue yarn for a pattern called "Dionysus", although I told myself it was fine because there's that one story about Dionysus and the dolphins and so on, but mostly I felt weird about using a yarn that had been specifically intended for one pattern for another pattern. When the only thing that was wrong with the other one was that it was toe-up. So I left it overnight, and in the morning I decided that, you know, I was fine with ripping it out and casting on for Poseidon the next day.
So on Sunday, yesterday, while watching LWW, I began to cast on for Poseidon. I have had some spectacular toe-up failures in the past, which is why I always do cuff-down socks. But, you know, the pattern had the short-row toe instructions written in, so I'd just follow that, right? WELL. The short-row toe in the pattern is not that well-written, so it, in fact, results in fairly obvious holes when in practice. (Why yarnovers? Seriously, why yarnovers? More important question: why didn't I just follow the nice tutorial on Knitty?) So I finished the toe, eyeing the holes worriedly and telling myself that I could sew them up later and started in on the pattern. Which is written, not charted. About five rows in I couldn't stand the holes anymore and frogged the entire thing.
At this point you would think I would have learned my lesson about this pattern and given it a rest, but instead I carried it downstairs to watch Vanity Fair after dinner and cast on for the same pattern cuff-down. It's a nice little lacy cable-y pattern that I gambled would look the same upside down as right-side up, so I would do the ribbing, then just work the lace pattern and figure out the heel when I got there; I've done enough socks by now that it wouldn't be that hard to work out a heel flap without the pattern sitting there telling me the numbers. Well, I didn't read the pattern closely enough, just closely enough to see that the stitch count stayed the same between the foot and the leg -- 58 stitches in the round. So I cast on 58 stitches, joined to work in the round, and began to calmly do my K2 P2 ribbing. Only when I got to the 58th stitch, I was on a knit stitch, not a purl stitch, and then I'd have four knit stitches next to each other. So I ripped again, figuring I'd just counted wrong, and did it all over again. Same result. At that point I looked at the pattern more closely, and realized that the cuff doesn't have the same stitch count as the leg; instead, it increases to 60 stitches during the last row of the leg. So I cast on 60 stitches, and this time my ribbing worked out. So today (listening to the Joy the Baker podcast) I started working on the lace pattern. Which is mostly fine, whatever, I can mostly get it to work divided across four DPNs, although I've got a yarnover in a place I don't like to have yarnovers (the first stitch of a new needle). Only there's the fact that you actually have to repeat the odd rounds twice across the leg, which is not something that's ever mentioned in the actual pattern. You don't repeat the lace pattern, you repeat the whole ROUND -- which is made more confusing by the fact that the lace repat is repeated itself within the round, but okay, whatever, I can figure that out, I just had to tink back about twenty stitches, but that's not so bad. Only at some point I decided to look at the project gallery for Poseidon on Ravelry. Which is when I discovered that other people had modified the pattern so that the lace pattern went all the way around the leg -- see, as written, because of the way that the round repeats rather than the lace pattern repeats, you end up with these two long stockinette strips of six stitches down the leg. Which is unnecessary, and also rather unflattering. (This probably would have been obvious if the pattern was charted as well as written, I'm just saying.) I've knit about an inch of the leg, or one and a half repeats of the lace pattern, and that stockinette strip is driving me crazy.
So I think I'm going to frog again, and possibly put the nice ball of yarn away while I knit something else. Dionysus, maybe. I don't know if I feel like tackling Poseidon ever again. Although I bet this yarn would look good in Dionysus. There's a really nice blue Dionysus on Ravelry, and there is that dolphin story, so it's not completely out of left field. (And the yarn still looks really good after being knit and frogged four times, too. I really like Black Trillium; her shop is here and she's got a sale on right now!) If not, well, I've got lots of other yarn in stash. Including a nice skein named Gaia (which...okay, would just feel really weird to use for a pattern called Dionysus) and two skeins of Malabrigo lace earmarked for Juno Regina (Rav link). Wait, am I the one with the problem or are there just a lot of knitters and designers familiar with mythology?
Speaking of...if I was any good at colorwork, I would totally have to make these socks (
highlyeccentric, you'll like these!) and these socks.Anyway. I'm a bit annoyed.