Hazards of Designing on the Needles

This weekend was rather quiet. Dave had to go out of town over night Friday night. The trip took a lot out of him, so he was low energy all weekend. The weather was gray and overcast. The America's Cup yacht race was on TV. In short, it was the perfect weekend to do nothing but knit. I loved it.


I was able to finish the back of the linen jacket and knit one front panel. The MaggiKnits linen ball band does not provide washing instructions. I once tried to block a seed stitch swatch of the linen with terrible results. This time, I emailed Robin of "Ballinadee Cardi" fame to get her advice. She said not to block the garment, and to have it dry cleaned. She cautioned me again about the linen's tendency to stretch. (Robin - Thanks so much!)

Last night, I pinned both pieces to the bed just for picture-taking purposes.



I was feeling pretty good about everything until I noticed that the seed stitch center border is wider than the seed stitch hem. I set out to design this garment largely on the fly. As I knit the back, my first decision was to make the seed stitch hem 2 inches, primarly because seed stitch is not as rhythmic as other stitches, and I got bored with it. All was good until I unwisely decided to make the center border on the front panel 3 inches wide. Of course, me being me, I didn't realize this was a problem until I finished the entire front panel. When I laid it out, the difference was noticeable. To my eye, the garment looks goofy. R.A.T.S. (Actually, I said something stronger than "rats" at that point. In fact, I may have made several stronger comments.)




That leaves me with 4 options:

1. Carry on and make a garment that will be proportioned a little strangely

2. Frog both pieces and start over

3. Pick out the hem and try to pick up stitches to knit the hem downward on both panels

4. Re-knit the front panel and make the center seed stitch edging the same width as the hem


I get the feeling knitting this garment is turning into a saga.