Gold, Or, Kulta, Guld

Gold no matter how you say it.  French, Swedish, Finnish or any other language, I got GOLD!!

Graylina was finished during the USA  vs Finland Hockey Game with photos taken in front of the TV at our friends' house,  for absolute proof.

I am privileged to be part of two medal ceremonies.  They take place this coming Wednesday and Thursday.  More pictures then.  In the meantime, I give you the details.

Pattern:  Graylina by Gralina Frie.  A free pattern on ravelry.
Needles:  4.5mm for the trim and 6mm for the body
Yarn:  Cascade Eco + in Eggplant purple
Modifications:  - Do mistakes count?  If not, then none.
Mistakes Made:  I misread the pattern.  Twice.  Once in reading the lace pattern and once in reading the sweater length.  The lace pattern is easily memorized and easily worked to quite dramatic
results. 

Row one, a right-side, knit row is a repeat of P5, K2.  All purl rows are those rows well-loved-by-lace knitters: 'Knit what you see' rows.  In Graylinan's case, K5, P2.  That, then, describes rows 1&2. 

Th lace pattern  has 11 rows total and I - in my skim reading - thought the pattern repeat was from Row 1.  It is not.  It is from Row 3.  I had done about 6 inches before I realized this error and decided I really liked the sweater  the way I was knitting it.  Wouldn't any knitter?

The other mistake I made concerns the  body length.   I thought the pattern said the body length was  24 inches.  Although I like my sweaters to be 23 inches, 24,  I thought,  would be fine.  However, I was mistaken.  The 24 inches referred to sleeve length.  The body length I did eventually find  in the  page-one, pattern preamble.    That however didn't happen until the sweater was almost finished.  It wasn't so much denial on my part at that point in the Olympics as mush as  'too late now.' 

So my  sweater, at a stretch, is  a mere 21 inches.  Definitely too short.  Can I fix it?  Yes.  But it will require ripping back the button bands

 

cutting off the bottom ribbing, picking up those live stitches, and knitting down rather than up, which means interpreting the  pattern upside down.  I can do all that - but just now, my enthusiasm for such a task fails me.

Lastly, Blogger and I are still not getting along in the  adding  or editing gadgets department.  Gadgets are Blogger speak for those side bar info lists you see on the blog.  For 2014, then - or at least until I can get the issue corrected - there will not be a side bar called FOs2014. Instead, to get around the problem, I will label all posts for finished projects - such as this post - as FOs 2014.  Click on that label when you want to re-visit my FOs.