Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Gall Darn Ribbing

Moose Eh!'s ribbing is giving me grief!  230  - or thereabouts - stitches for each row.  26 full and 12 short rows.  Lots of knitting.  Sunday night, I was a couple of rows  from casting off when I quit for the evening. 


At that point, only the shoulders were seamed, but I couldn't resist a quick try-on.  Horrors!  Two horrors, actually.  The buttonholes were on the wrong side.  Despite being a mild feminist,  a women of the seventies, I nonetheless  like my buttonholes on the right hand side.  Moose Eh!'s buttonholes were on the left.  I re-read the pattern.  Yep, I had done them as instructed.    Now why would they write a pattern like that?   A re-knit was in order.  Dang!

Once that shock  subsided,  I turned the wide ribbing back between the markers to form the shawl collar.  Double Dang!!  Of course!  There are three colours in the ribbing. Each  used more than once.  I had been careful, every time the  colour changed, to   work knit-only stitches in the first row of the colour change.  The trick of working knit-only stitches, on that first row, prevents the purl bumps of the different colour from showing on the right side of the work.  A much nicer look IMHO!   My work looked marvellous on the right side.  But when folded back between the markers, what showed of course, was the wrong side.

Now, there was never any mention in the pattern of switching from right-side knitting to wrong-side knitting between markers to keep the public side of the sweater neat and tidy.  But there should have been.  Again, I was reminded that when I knit from a pattern, my brain stops functioning.  Designers only have so much room on a one, or few-page, pattern. They do presume that the knitter knows something.  But this knitter presumes that the designer has worked out all the bugs and my brain turns off.

Ripped again.    Second - or is it third  - time through, I am knitting right-side rows on the right side before and after the markers and wrong-side rows between the markers.  Then on the wrong side,   wrong-side rows before and after the markers and right-side rows between the markers.  Get it?

 Disappointed, but rare the cloud though that doesn't sport a silver lining.   I am delightedly happy with the great job I did picking up the stitches for this gall-darn ribbing!

3 comments:

Zieknits said...

I hope all the struggles you've had with this Moose won't taint your enjoyment of the finished sweater.

I'm betting the buttonholes are on the "wrong" side because the sweater is listed as being 'unisex'. While some women may have a momentary pang about wearing a left-over buttoning sweater, most men would sooner freeze to death than wear a right-over "woman's" sweater! ;-)

Having said all that, yeah, a one-line heads up from the designer would have been nice.

Sandra said...

funny - I don't notice or care about button sides, but I'm obviously in the minority. I made some pajamas for my husband and inadvertently put the buttons on the wrong side. He doesn't even button his pajama shirts, yet he won't wear them! And being obstinate, I won't change them. Stalemate.

Needles said...

All I know is I am very confused when it is time to put buttons on anything. I recall reading why things are buttoned on different sides, but I still don't get why we still use it.