Things I Have (Not) Learned.

To save time, take time to check the gauge before starting.

How often do we see that at the top of a pattern and just ignore it? "I'm using the recommended yarn" "I always knit to gauge" "It'll fit someone". I KNOW checking gauge is important, and it really does make life easier (all the ponchos I made--started with one gauge swatch and a calculator and all 4 turned out exactly the size planned).

But yet, sometimes, even I ignore the warning. With 7 girls, ages 11 to 1, between the two sides of my family, there's bound to be someone that an item will fit.

I wanted to use up a skein and a half (potentially two dye lots) of Bernat Sweet Stripes. I also had a skein of white. I needed to be able to work the 1/2 skein into the design, instead of just adding it on to the end. In Knitwords No. 42 (Autumn 2007) there is a pattern called "Dude!" for a shawl collared sweater on the LK150. The pattern gauge is 22st and 28 rows to 4" on T5, and the yarn gauge is 22st/4". Good to go, right?

I was planning on giving it to Meg, and knowing that she's tall, I added some length in the body. That made me goof up later, so I had to fix the top portion of the front. I didn't add any length in the sleeves because, well, I ran out of the striped yarn and switched to just white at the tops of the sleeves. I had planned ahead, and made the bottom ribbing in white; the sleeve ribbings and collar are done at the end.

One other thing I did. This is a self striping yarn, of fairly equal thickness. Once I split for the neck, I played with the yarns to get approximately the same size stripes, otherwise, they would have been more than twice the thickness they had been on the body.So, you'd think that all was well. Umm. Not quite. I ended up getting only 20sts/4" so my sweater is wider than planned. Not a problem, right, cause I added extra length? Well. My row gauge ended up being 30 rows/4" so those extra rows got eaten up by the smaller gauge and it came out to barely the length for the original size. So, now it's a little boxy compared to it's length.

None of the kids in the family are short and boxy. That's reserved for the adults, LOL.

Edit: Meg found this sweater and wore it outside today (November 4, 2010). I could CLEARLY see that the upper sleeves and collar are a different shade of white. This annoys me so much with Bernat/Patons yarns. You get a verigated or striping yarn, and they don't have a solid colour that actually matches the colours in the other yarn. I think the white was called "Bernat Co-ordinates"....but it doesn't match! I find this to be a really big issue with their Decor, Canadiana, and Handicrafter yarns too.