The Little Knittin' Kitten

I've been loving my Classico Twinset. I'm actually using the yarn called for in the pattern (a rarity for me) and I got gauge with no trouble. Despite a few brief turns in stockinette hell it's been fun to knit. The cashmere/wool yarn is soft and only occasionally give me a knitting blister and the yardage is so good I've been able to knit the bodies of both pieces in only 5 balls. Yet, despite such an upstanding record, maybe out of boredom or falling in with a bad crowd, any good project can go bad. And this one has.

Last night, while Nyron played Metal Gear Solid on the Playstation, I decided to get some finishing work done. I sewed together the shoulder seams on the shell and started to contemplate how to knit the collar. I've knit everything on this project in the round, even the things that are directed to be knit flat in the pattern, so I'm trying very hard to maintain this continuity. The directions say to sew together one shoulder seam, then pick up the stitches around the neck starting at the other shoulder seam and then sew up the shoulder seam and the side of the collar when finished. Well, that's not very seamless, so I decided I would sew both shoulders and then knit the collar in the round. I don't have any dpns that size, so my first thought was the 2-circ method, which I love. However, I don't have another circ in this size, either. I pulled out my Denises, but I remembered Brenda Dane's cautionary tale about the 2 needles of the "same size" by different companies that aren't actually the same size at all. So I measured the Denises and sure enough, it's slightly larger than the Harmony Options I'm using. Drat. But all is not lost, because this was a great excuse to make myself learn magic loop, which worked swimmingly.

After plugging along with the magic loop, I finished the collar. It looked a little long and I was afraid it might sit like a turtleneck, so I decided to try it on. This is probably something I should have done immediately after sewing up the shoulders.

As you can see, it doesn't quite fit.

OK, it really doesn't fit.

I think Nyron was having too much fun taking these pictures.

I'm quite ticked off. The problem is not that I knit the collar too tight; if only that's what it was! The opening itself is just too small. I'm going to have to not only frog the collar, but undo the sewing, frog a few inches of the shoulders and then re-configure the decreases to make the opening larger, without turning the shoulder seams into spaghetti straps. *sigh*

Spirit saw how distressed I was and come over to console me.

I may continue working on the cardigan part, but I think at least the shell is going into hibernation for a while until I cool down.

Until next we knit!

=^_^=