Thursday, January 26, 2006

Rogue and I, Round #4

Dear Theresa and PumpkinMama,

I know I said I was going to knit Rogue and you both said "me too!" and I was glad to have company in this sweater-making-thingamajig and hoped that I'd be able to keep up.

The truth? I need a remedial rogue group. This is attempt #3 (of a single sleeve; I'm going to skip right over the 2-3 attempts of doing both sleeves at once) and it's not going so well.

Evidence of this? I warn you that it isn't pretty....

See that not right area at the top of the cable? Something went wrong, and though I usually can look past such mistakes and keep going, this time I can't.


(bad picture of color, not great picture of cable, not bad picture of the cable mistake mess.) (and after looking at pictures of their finished sleeves, something doesn't look right with my purl row as the cable border.....)


frogging said mess - actually, make it Mess (with a capital M). Those yarn pieces are all interwoven and tangled from being cabled together.


really, how does this happen? (once, I can understand, but twice?) It's a wonderful pattern that everyone else has had great luck understanding. I'm going to blame in on trying to work on this after a long day at the hospital when I'm not at my best. (The EtherKnitter can attest to this as well....)


attempting to pick up stitches - notice the huge gaping spaces between stitches. They're too big, and what I got out of it didn't look right. (The cables were fixed but the gauge was waaaay off.)

I'd take a picture of it now, but it's going to be re-ripped when I get home later tonight. I finally got the cabled mess figured out but grabbed the wrong needles to get it going again and there is an obvious change in my gauge. I could leave it and see if it blocks out; I could rip out the whole thing and start over but at this point I feel a bit of emotional attachment to this silly piece of cloth.

I'm dogsitting for the next 10 days and won't have access to my computer to put pictures up, but with any luck I'll be done with both sleeves by then. I'll keep you updated.

(I will finish it; I will continue to work on it, I will continue to be in awe of both of the red rogues in progress. If I suddenly give up with the green and buy red yarn to try it again it won't be a conincidence.)

8 Comments:

Blogger Theresa said...

I never thought about color as a confounding influence. Might be something to it, although I think you'll look lovely in the olive.

It'll all be OK, somehow . . . It looks like you've gotten it figured out.

Just a warning - I had row gauge issues.

7:57 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Ripping and re-ripping is sooo frustrating. Maybe Rogue needs a little time out. Maybe a little quality time in a low rent grocery store bag at the back of your closet under some shoeboxes would remind Rogue just who's boss...

8:21 AM  
Blogger Carole Knits said...

Perservere, perservere. you can do it!

9:03 AM  
Blogger Pumpkinmama said...

How frustrating. May your dogsitting days bring you clarity and good peaceful sleeve knitting karma.

9:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Time out and fresh perspective often help. When my stitches get really wonky, sometimes I rip back a little farther, and it helps unrelax the yarn. If nothing helps, you can rip back to the start of the row, chop (only one more end to weave in as payback) and chop out that offending section of yarn. Depends on your OCD quotient for the day.

10:22 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

I'm sorry. I'd put it in timeout, myself, but then again that's why I have a closet full of UFOs. Are you sure the yarn agrees that it wants to be Rogue? Sometimes I find that the yarn rebels against the project, and it's usually right in the end.

As for ripping out cables, it sucks. Make sure you rip out down to a wrong-side row--trying to reconstruct cables on a patterning row is maddening (as you may have noticed). It's a little hard to tell, but if you're putting them back on the needles, and you're having that kind of problem, rip 'em back off the needle and rip one more row. Every other row will be much easier to put back on the needles.

And one must always have stupid knitting available for times when one is feeling...well, you know.

11:12 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

OH, hugs to you! It sounds so like what I would do! Sticktoitiveness at this point is tough but so necessary. We'll all be cheering you on!

6:10 PM  
Blogger Lorette said...

Hang in there! I'd rip back the whole row to a non-cable row, and pick that up, then put it away until you can focus on it. Once you get past that cable it will sail along.

1:10 AM  

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