I used to watch a lot of This Old House back in the early ’90s. Bob Vila and Norm Abram would hammer (hah!) home the notion that you should measure twice, cut once. Good advice. But I think for knitting, it’s measure twice, then seam.
I finished the pieces for the Central Park Hoodie last week, steam blocked the pieces, and used a three needle bind off to join the shoulders. Beautiful. I picked up the stitches for the hood, and knit away. I decided to keep the cable going up the back of the hood, although I don’t know that I’ll ever wear the hood. I don’t wear hats because they mess up my hair!
It looks really tall, and it is. I was supposed to knit for 11 inches before shaping the top, but I knit for 14 because I wanted the hood to be a bit loose and hangy, like my favorite sweatshirt hoodie.
I like the way the cables come together at the top of the hood. I opted to do a three needle bind off at the top, instead of seaming it together later as directed. I thought about grafting the two edges together so that there would be no seam, but I hate grafting, so no go.
Here’s the front, but wait. Something’s missing.
Yes, it’s the left front that you see on the side there. When I tried on the hood, something felt a little off. The left front armhole is one cable repeat longer than the right. I must have forgotten to turn the counter on the tens side somewhere in there. Carp! One repeat is 10 rows is almost 2 inches of too much fabric.
I thought about it for a while. Plan A: Ignore the whole thing, and ease the extra fabric in when I sew in the sleeve. But I would KNOW, and that would make me feel lopsided. That’s a lot of extra fabric. It would probably pooch out over my chest. One-sided poochiness would NOT be attractive.
Plan B: I could rip out the entire hood (a week’s worth of knitting; there’s a lot of fabric there), unseam the shoulders, rip down the front, and re-work from there. Heartbreaking.
Or Plan C: I could snip the front in the armhole, pick up the stitches above, and rip down 9 rows below, and then GRAFT the whole thing back together. Did I mention that I HATE GRAFTING? But I think it’s the least painful option, so I snipped, and that’s where I am, so far. At least the error wasn’t above the neck shaping; that would be an automatic Plan B.
I figure if it doesn’t look good when I graft it back together, I can always go back to plan B. Excuse me while I go cry in my coffee. And look for a good grafting tutorial on the trusty interwebs. My Vogue Knitting book was only slightly helpful. Nothing about grafting purls!
PDXKnitterati 