Goal Met

Goal Met.  Doesn't it feel good to be  able to say that?  Remember last week when I said  'with a quiet weekend in store, I  hoped to  knit as far as  the waist of my Snowflake sweater'?  Well, the waist has come and gone and on to the bottom border, I went.

You see, it came to me in my dreams.  Friday night.  Why don't I hang that sweater on the machine to do the miles of boring stockinet  that forms the body?  Sure it was being  knit in the round.  If,  however, I were to  divide the stitches in half to create two pieces  - a front and a back   - then I could hang them one by one  on the machine. 

Of course there were a couple of issues.  There would be a seam required and I would need a stitch from each side of each piece to do that. Casting on two extra stitches for each  piece  would solve that issue.    Then, of course there was the matter of matching gauge.  I needed to  find the carriage setting on the machine that would achieve the identical gauge to my hand knitting. 

I think I did it.  Take a look. 

 

The machine knitting starts about an inch below the dark brown, lace yoke.  No noticeable difference there.  When I finished machine knitting the front and the back I picked up the stitches across the bottom and knit,  by hand, the seed stitch border.  A good afternoon's work.

Now on to the sleeves.