The Sweatshop of Love Blog

Apparently Vogue Knitting is notorious for having a lot of mistakes in their patterns. I didn’t know this, and I know I’ve knit Vogue patterns before and don’t remember having problems. And I would remember if I had THIS MANY GOD DAMN PROBLEMS with a pattern.

Damn Sweater

As you can see, I’ve battled and have almost won. If you follow me on twitter you might have seen my *%$%@% filled tweeting while working through this pattern. It’s. Just. Wrong. In so many places.

Last week I shared my struggles with the front shaping, and while there has to be schematic issues with the front shaping, I’m not using the yarn the pattern calls for and even though my gauge is on and the issues I was having were REALLY bad, human error could have been a factor. In my most generous moments, I can see that it might maybe have something to do with me.

HOWEVER, when I hit the sleeves I noticed that the decrease instruction is just plain missing a part! The SSKP dec should indicate that you need to slip the stitch back to the RH needle to finish the dec. You don’t want to knit that stitch again, but the pattern never tells you to slip it back over.

... damn sweater

THEN I got to the front right inset, and there is just no way around the fact that it’s just screwed. First of all, my right neck inset turned out to be the LEFT NECK INSET, which could have been my own error somewhere because I was so confused by the increasing. Row 4 is NOT an increase row at all. Row 5 is the increase row and you increase 2 sts each Row 5. Couldn’t get that whole K1b thing, so I ended up just knitting like normal. Because I had to adjust my decreases in the front piece to get that to work out, I knew I’d have to adjust my increases for the front neck inset, so I ended up pretty much just repeating rows 4 and 5 to match my front piece to get 29 sts. I decreased them back down in the same manner. THEN trying to make a matching inset for the other side was a nightmare.

Once I got through that I thought the worst had to be over. Then I read the button hole row, which reads from the pattern like this exactly: [K1 st, bind off 2 sts] 3 times, k to end. There are 60 sts for the button band. And, just to remind everyone, this is what the sweater is suppose to look like.

Check Out Those Buttons

I ended up [K15, BO2] 3 times, K to end, starting at the neck line on the RS. SERIOUSLY VOGUE DO YOU NOT EMPLOY A TECH EDITOR?!

ANOTHER annoying thing about all the stitches you are suppose to pick up throughout the pattern is that it doesn’t tell you which side to start with, so when it says to knit 5 rows, then the next row is supposed to be a right side row, I was always off. I picked up and knit the stitches on the right side, so I guess this is the wrong thing to do, too.

I’ve got some seaming and some major blocking to do to finish this bitch up. It might take me MONTHS to forget all this pattern bullshit and enjoy wearing this sweater, but I’m going to wear the hell out of it IN SPITE OF IT! SPITE SPITE!

And I couldn’t have gotten this far without Laura. She is knitting this god forsaken sweater, too, and has helped me so much when I couldn’t figure things out. I would not have gotten through the inset panel without her. I’m cracking a beer tonight for you, girl!

You know when you knit something so cute you can help but just laugh? And you show it to other people and they just laugh? And then everyone is laughing at something you knit and you feel pretty damn good about it?

SHEEP!

Am I right?

SHEEP BUTT!

Like I said last week when I cast on, I’m planning on knitting four of these hats for gifts over the next few months. The first one is for my coworker Patsy, who is building a hospital in Africa. Her foundation is called Ivory Coast Mothers and Children, and they are having a fundraiser this weekend. I knit a Dino Baby Sweater for her last year that brought in some money, so hopefully my little hat will do the same.

Giggle! GIGGLE! Giggle!

I used barely any yarn for this guy – not even half a skein of white and practically no green or brown. I followed a bunch of ravelry instructions for duplicate stitching on the legs instead of intarsia-ing them on and it worked out great.

One down, three to go!

Pattern: Sheep Baby Hat from 60 Quick Baby Knits, pattern by Renee Lorin

Yarn: Knit Picks Swish Worsted in White, Dublin, and Squirrel Heather

Needles: Size 7 16″ circular and DPNs

Ravelry Project Page

Aidez by Cirilia Rose!

Aidez!

Aidez made a very strong, late push to beat Delancey, so I’ll have to wait a few more months to knit up that beautiful sweater. I’ll knit you some day, Delancey! I will!

But how cute is Aidez? Cute from the front AND really cute from the back.

Cabled Goodness

I love that y’all love cables as much as I do. First Beatnik, now Aidez?! I’m in cable heaven over here.

Our Fall Knit Along starts three weeks from today on Monday, October 17th! So let’s talk yarn. I’m going to do something I’ve never done before.

Wool of the Andes Bulky in Stormy

I’m going to knit a sweater in a dark neutral. Wool of the Andes Bulky in Stormy, to be exact. Shocked? Me too! Especially with all the beautiful colors Wool of the Andes Bulky comes in. But I’m doing it!

Aidez is a Berroco pattern so naturally it calls for Berroco Peruvia Quick, a beautiful super bulky yarn that also comes in a ton of beautiful colors. Look for a bulky yarn, a step larger than worsted, and we are going to knit this sweater FAST!

I’ve been reading reviews and it sounds like the pattern blocks out a size larger, which makes sense! With size 10 1/2 needles it’s bound to grow. So plan on knitting the sweater in a size smaller than you normally do, and get yarn accordingly.

450 Votes!

And I’ve got to quickly mention how blown away I am at all the votes I got! I hardly think there will be so many of you actually participating in the KAL, but I still appreciate the participation.

Last but not least, we’ve got a winner in Katie’s yarn broach giveaway!

Lucky Number 4!

Congratulations, Mary!

Mary's Winning Comment

I emailed Mary and will be mailing out her yarn broach ASAP. Did you miss out? Grab a broach at Katie’s Etsy Shop.

Last week I had three projects on the needles, and despite the fact that I got my Wedding Shrug bound off, I still have three projects on the needles this week!

Sheep Baby Hat!

This is a pattern you’ll be seeing a lot of over the next few months. It’s Sheep Hat pattern from the book 60 Quick Baby Knits! Is it the cutest?! I hope I like it so much after FOUR of them. One of four got a good start this week! I’m using Knit Picks Swish Worsted, which is fantastic for baby hats because it’s washable and one of the softest yarns Knit Picks has.

Tiny Ruffle Rose Pillow Progress

The Ruffle Rose Pillow was the odd man out this week. It’s too big to carry around and when I had been home I’d been working on the wedding shrug and Vogue Sweater.

#25 Rib Yoke Topper

And that is where all the problems started. I finished the back easily enough, and ass you can see there is some crazy shit going on with the front. The bottom rib section got put on a holder to add pockets later, then stitches are cast back on and each side is worked one by one.

PROBLEMS

I finished the front as written and it was very wrong. The decreased section was way too long, and didn’t leave enough room for the side to increase back out. You can tell in the picture for the sweater and the schematics for the sweater that the decreases don’t go up that high, so I ripped one side back and tried something else.

In the picture above, the left side of the sweater is the pattern as written, then I fudged the increases to get back to the right stitch count in the short amount of space left. On the right side of the sweater I did a sssk decrease instead of ssk, and that got the decrease section in the place it should be by repeating that decrease 14 times to get down to 13 sts. That let me follow the increases as written in the pattern for the most part. I still ran out of room at the end and had to increase at a quicker rate, but as you can see it looks a ton better than the first try.

So I’ll be ripping back the left side, too, and matching the shaping for the yoke.

But how crazy is that? I don’t understand how the pattern can work out as written. My gauge is spot on. Even if it is a tiny bit off, following the pattern as written gets a REALLY bad result that can’t just be my gauge. I’m hoping there aren’t any other surprises in the rest of the pattern.

This is my project for the weekend, so hopefully I’ll have the majority of a sweater to show off next week! Baring any more incidents.

When I made this Wedding Shrug in January I followed the pattern, Chocolate Shrug, exactly. The shrug turned out great and made the bride very happy! She hired me to knit it for her, though, so I didn’t know her personally. I’ve been friends with Rachel, who is getting married next weekend, for many years, so customizing the pattern to get something similar but more to what I think she’s like was easy.

Wedding Shrug Take 2

Not that she’ll notice. And who am I kidding, really? I said back in January I wasn’t going to knit anything with mohair ever again, so I just wanted to get from cast on to bind off as fast as possible. The mods, though, turned out fantastically, and mohair and I have finally come to an understanding.

Stripes and Yarn Overs

I cleaned up the pattern by eliminating the cables, leaving a beautiful, subtle striping across the shrug, and only repeated rows 1-8 of the chart pattern. The first shrug I knit had some messy places, because the random yarn over pattern doesn’t really translate through mohair. The simple yarn over Vs are beautiful, so I just made a ton of those.

Yarn Over Vs and Stripes

The mohair hates complications, so by keeping it simple the shrug looks clean and beautiful and classic, if I do say so myself.

Pretty Shrug!

Knit Picks Aloft is fantastic, like I was saying next week. Me hatting mohair has nothing to do with this yarn. I just don’t like fuzzy, tiny yarn! I’ll be turning to Aloft for all my future mohair needs, of which I hope there are none.

My dress is cute, right? My friend Tara gave it to me last week and I’ve been dying to wear it! This might be my only opportunity before spring so I had to jump at the chance!

Pattern: Chocolate Shrug by Katya Gorbacheva

Yarn: Knit Picks Aloft in white

Needles: Size 7s

Ravelry Project Page