Matchy

OK, it should worry me that it took me 3 tries to spell matchy correctly. Especially since it is not technically a word.



Here is the Lutea Lace Shell. She stole one of my beers, but I guess I'll just grab one and join her instead of whining about it. Here are the specs:

Pattern: Lutea Lace Shell, IK Summer 2007
Yarn: 3 balls + a little Blue sky Organic Cotton in "bone" (about 500 yards)
Size: 40 in bust
Time: exactly a week
Mods: I only did two of the increase rounds near the top instead of 3. There was also the lace saga....




So these straps. They're pretty. I like them. I knit them at least 3 times for the back. Problem? The lace chart is wrong in the pattern. The pattern tells you to knit 2, then do a 4-stitch repeat. Over 21 stitches. I originally thought that I was just being slow, but 21-2 = 19, which is not divisible by 4. It is, in fact, prime. So OK, after thinking I just k1, then did the 4-stitch repeat. OK cool, that is for the right side. The left side asks you to do the same thing, changing the k2tog to ssk. Thinking that everything was cool, I did.
It did not look good.
It biased toards the right and made the neckline look asymmetrical, and the two sides didn't match. I can deal with a little bit of no matchy, but it bothered me. So after some aggressive swatching, I did the mirror image of the right instead with different ssk, so I did this for the left side instead of what was written for the pattern:

Round 1: [k3, yo, k1, yo}k1
Round 3: [ssk, k3] k1 - Here I did the slipping purlwise instead of kwise.
(rounds 2 and 4 are purling across)

I hope this helps someone, if in fact anyone needs it. It is entirely possible that I missed something major.


In any case, I still love it. The cotton is super-soft, and there was minimal stretching. I haven't yet blocked it, but I wore it all day on Saturday and the boy said that it looked nice. I offered to make him a sweater out of the same stuff in another color, but he has this thing against sweaters, I don't get it, it must be some weird California thing.


Anyway, my brain is on autopilot today. Yesterday I spent 15 hours in lab. FIFTEEN. On a Sunday. I hate doing growth curves, I really do. I got some sweet data out of it though. I need to go write now. Peace out lovely people.