The center pattern of the Alpine lace scarf seems to go much faster than the border pattern. However, when combined with a beer or perhaps some wine, it can be much more difficult. Some of you may scoff at using stitch markers, but I find that it makes it real simple for me to keep track of the stitches in a repeat. Well, after a glass (or was it two?) of wine, I was at the inside border part of the pattern and realized that there were only 4 stitches where there were supposed to be 5. I'm feeling daring so I drop down a few rows and see if I can figure out where I lost the stitch. No dice--I couldn't find anything wrong with the pattern. I look at the fabric and can't see where the pattern is off. I put the project away because when all else fails, I tink and I couldn't bear it at the time (maybe it was the blurry vision from the wine).
Anyway, a couple of days later I tinked back a few rows to where I knew for certain that the count was correct. I start knitting the pattern again and get to the inside border again. FYI, when I tinked, I kept the stitch markers in place. Why is this important? Because as I'm knitting and counting stitches, I realized that there had not been a problem with the stitch count. Apparently, while I was handling the fabric the split ring marker got caught up on the neighboring stitch and wound up moving over one. Duh. I thought I had checked the stitch counts for the pattern repeats on each side but apparently not. Needless to say, I needed to step away from the scarf again.
Here it is in its current state:
I think I need something like 30 more repeats to finish the center panel. Yeah, so not going to be done for my friend's wedding this weekend.
This weekend was "cold". It may have even dropped to freezing one night in the town over from us. As a general rule, we put off turning the heat on as long as possible. I would have turned it on this weekend except that we are in the process of upgrading our electric breaker box and hubby had not re-connected the heat pump. So what did I do? Started knitting some Fetching wristwarmers for me. Since its a small enough project, I figured by the time I made a swatch, I would be half done with the actual wristwarmer. My gauge (both row and stitch) is different from the pattern so I needed to add some cable repeats to the top so it would cover my knuckles. I like the way it looks but I'm not crazy about the loose bind off. I might use a less stretchy bind off or perhaps do another cable row and then bind off since the cable row pulls in more than the regular 4x1 ribbing.
I have to admit that the first wristwarmer really isn't wide enough--the hole by the bottom of the thumb is huge when I pull this on and the ribbing is pulled tight. So for the second one, I cast on an extra 5 stitches (50 total) to see if that helps. Considering this endeavor took a couple of nights of work, I think I can motivate to re-knit the first wristwarmer. So far, I'm still only using the first skein so I might be able to get a second pair done from my sister out of the second one.
