Tuesday, April 17, 2007

Decision Time (Or What to do now that I'm way past the swatch stage)

I could try to blame it on Michelle I guess. She was thinking of doing a class on a summer t-shirt. So I thought maybe I would knit up one for me and it could also be a shop model. I also wanted to try out the new Shire Silk from Plymouth, so I thought it would be a win-win situation. (That might be the first miscalculation now that I think about it.)

Knowing I knit a little bit loosely I cast on my pretty salmon colored Shire Silk on a #5 instead of the #6 recommended in the patttern. It being a top down pattern I thought I'd just check in on my gauge as I went and make adjustments as needed. That's where it starts to get fuzzy. The gauge needed to get a top slightly smaller than I thought I needed was 5 stitches to the inch. To the best of my calculation I was getting 4.75+ per inch. I thought that was pretty good and if it came out a smidge larger, that would be just perfect.

Needless to say it did not come out just perfect or I'd be showing you a picture now instead of rambling on here. To say that it is a little too large for me would be stating it diplomatically. The 4.75+ that I swear I was getting in the upper part of this garment has expanded to dead on 4 stitches to the inch in the rest of the garment, giving me quite a few extra inches.

The question is what to do now? I see several choices each with its own merit:
1. Rip back up to the armholes and
a. use a smaller needle
b. use fewer stitches throughout the body
c. both a. and b.
2. Promptly forget I ever heard of this garment and bury it in the back of my closet.
3. Use it as a prize for an exciting new game at the retreat. Ask each person in attendance to secretly write her bust and hip measurements on a paper and the one with the closest actual measurements to this garment wins the t-shirt!

2 comments:

Folks at River Knits said...

Absolutely number 3!!

Heather

Jamisyn said...

I would have to say 1 or 2, since number 3 would leave me completely out of the running :(, but it is a great idea and some lucky lady would be very happy!