MSCE April Update: Baby Sweater, Baby Sweater, List, Rant.

Well I didn't flag yesterday's Earth Day List as my MSCE post because I thought I would do something else- but I think I'm going to retroactively say this was my Make Something Cool Every Day Post for Wednesday...

Mostly because this "easy" Baby Sweater I'm making is not as easy as advertised. Here's how it went:

Monday MSCE: Start sweater. I am pleased with the "easy" all one piece pattern I found online. I knit a swatch for gauge and am pretty much right on. Yippeee!

Start the pattern, knitting is going amazingly fast! I measure for gauge (but I'm not worried I got gauge on the swatch) to find gauge has half left me. I'm getting it for length but not for width- it's now a little bit too wide.

I ponder how best to fix this- and come up empty since I'm getting length. Then decide babies are pudgy it won't hurt if it's a bit too wide- and at the worst this can be a toddler sweater if the adjust the arms and make everything longer. I keep knitting.

I knit away, feeling secure in the pattern, marveling at the speed with which the rows are piling up. Clearly I am in a knitting time warp- that is actually in my favor! I casually (perhaps with a hint if smugness) say to my husband- "look at how fast this is going, I'm already around the neck and halfway done with one arm".

Then I hit an instruction in the pattern that isn't clear to me based on the knitting I have so far. I begin to consider how this sweater will come together and realize I see another problem- the garter stitch cuff doesn't go all the way around, and if I follow the next instruction as written it seems I will have a sleeve almost as wide as the back of the sweater.

This seems wrong- but I consider continuing to knit. I have felt like something might be wrong in a pattern before, trusted that the designer has a vision that I don't yet understand and have usually had it turn out O.K.

I knit a few more rows and ponder this: It seems simple enough- and because it's so simple I actual think I get how this should come together and it seems the directions are wrong. But the pattern has been online since like 2003- with no errata mentioned. Maybe I really don't understand how this should come together and I should knit on for all to be revealed later.

In a huff of frustration I stop knitting and go to bed.

Tuesday: I read, re-read, re-re-read pattern. Look it up online and find nothing. Feel as though I might be a bit dull when the only note I find online about this pattern says this is basic knitting if you can't follow this you should get knitting for dummies. Now annoyed (O.K. more annoyed) I dig around online more-

Jackpot! (so to speak). I find small thread of message posts on the site I got the pattern from (and also from like 2003) asking what I'm asking. Turns out I am right, this pattern is wrong! Victory is mine... except now I have to...

Tuesday MSCE: Frog Sweater, Restart.

Rip out inches and inches of knitting and start back where the sleeves begin.

Restart sleeves with cuff on sleeve from the get-go.

P.S. I was thinking of what I could put at the bottom of this post as a "you might also want to read" cross link and it occurs to me that I may want to write and errata for this post.

Always Read The Directions, I think I want to add- but don't always follow them!