Aidez disaster

As I was blocking the fronts of my Aidez cardigan yesterday, very excited to start sewing it up, I saw something dreadful. Do you see it?

For some reason, I decided to knit the ribbing of one front as 2×2 instead of 1×1. My options are:

1. Ignore it, sew it up, and figure only knitters will notice.

2. Reknit the entire front.

3. Perform advanced knitting surgery: snip off the cuff, pick up the stitches, and knit the ribbing downward.

1 is, obviously, out of the question. I’ve put too much work into this thing to resign myself to “homemade” now.

2 is not a terrible option. The knitting goes quickly, and I’ve got plenty of yarn.

But I think I’m going to go with 3. I don’t think it will affect the look of the whole bottom band appreciably–and if it goes horribly wrong, the worst that will happen is that I’ll have to reknit the front, right?

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A fun, helpful note: The waste yarn that’s running through the pieces marks off 10- and 5-row increments. Much easier than trying to keep track any other way, and it helped me figure out that I had not, as I suspected in a moment of horror, actually knit the fronts three inches longer than the back. I read about the technique a long time ago over at Mason-Dixon knitting, but this is the first time I’ve actually used it. Great trick!

Almost FO: Blocking Aidez

Aidez blew up Ravelry a while ago. It has two design elements I usually can’t stand–raglan sleeves and aran-weight yarn–but I saw so many cute versions that I thought I’d give it a try. (Also, I’ve never knit seamed raglan sleeves; maybe they’ll be an improvement over seamless ones.) My knitting time is restricted to about an hour a day now, while Chris and I watch something in the precious time between Abby’s bedtime and my bedtime, so this has gone slooooowly. I have no idea if it’s going to fit or be wearable, but I loved knitting it and I think it looks awesome!

Blocking mats from KnitPicks.

Despite the many cables, the pattern memorized easily. I only made a few mistakes. Can you spot this one?

One of my Ears of Corn leans the wrong way.

I focused on opening up the ribbing when I blocked. My 1×1 ribbing tends to be a little wonky (whose doesn’t?), so I compensated by going down about 4 needle sizes. I think it looks so much better.

The ribbing isn't actually crooked; it's just my camera angle.

My pin-and-space shortage means that I won’t be able to block this all at once, so don’t look for the finished piece until next week or so. (The sewing up! Ack!) Now, on to something quick and seamless to recover.