Life At Villa Boswell

I love the Interweave Winter ‘06 edition.  To me, it’s full of great projects, like the Venezia Pullover, with both Fairisle techniques and steeking.  I haven’t gotten around to that pattern yet, but I know I will.  However, back in January of 2007, I wanted a "welcome back to knitting" project after years away.  Initially, I had started with a simple stockinette stitch coat, but after knitting about 3/4 of the back, i just started to feel extremely bored.  I wanted something more engaging.

Welcome to the Pewter Coat! 

I really thought this wouldn’t be as hard as the pattern indicated, since I had done lots of cables before and didn’t find them difficult.  However, I had never worked off a chart before, so I was a little intimidated.  I decided to go with a brown heather wool (it’s been so long now that I forgot which yarn I used!) instead of the grey cashmere blend shown on the model.  Here’s the finished result! (Finished this sweater in August, 2007).

Lessons Learned

I swear the chart has a mistake, and here’s why.  First, the pattern calls for a cast-on of stitches to correspond to the number of stitches in the chart, with additional stitches for the selvedge on each edge.  So, far, so good.  However, the *first* row of the chart has a yarn over (increase 1) paired with an SSK (or K2tog) on the very same row.  I have had three experienced knitters tell me that this should be no problem, but the fact is, that if you are working over 32 stitches, this method causes you to "run out of stitches" by the time you get to the end of the row!

First, I tried to simply cast on the correct number of stitches that would actually be required to support the first row of the pattern.  In this case, an additional 2 stitches for each pattern section, or 8 extra stitches for the back.  This just didn’t work, since as I worked upward to the subsequent rows, I had too many stitches!  Then, I took the pattern to a store where a somewhat experienced knitter tried to work it out.  She couldn’t.  I also took this pattern to my niece, who has been knitting for quite a while, and she was equally baffled.  At that point, I just "gave up" and simply shifted the decrease part of the pattern to the next row.  I had to re-draw the chart on graph paper, but, it worked!

I’d be interested in hearing from any reader familiar with  this chart how to correctly work this out.  In addition to the chart adjustment to work out the yarn-over/ssk issue, I also adjusted the chart to have a more simplified stitch pattern on the more minor cross-cables.  This made for a more consistent vertical pattern, in my opinion. 

In the end, I was pretty happy with the fit! And, I thought it gave me a great introduction into working off a chart, as well as some hands-on involvement in pattern design adjustement. However, if I were do to this coat again, I would go with a yarn closer to the recommended cashmere/mohair blending for a more comfortable feel next to the skin.  Additionally, I’d pick something that is both lighter in color and woven to provide better stitch definition.  I learned with this sweater that dark colors don’t show off cable stitches to their best effect.  I suppose you could use this little tip to actually choose a dark color to work difficult cables, since little errors won’t show up very much either! 

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 2nd, 2008 at 4:35 pm and is filed under Knits. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.