Project from HE**

Raise your needles in a knitters' high five for me. This weekend I completed the body of The Project from HE**. It is a fairisle with arm hole steeks but knit back and forth from the placket up. (On the left, the arrow points to one of the arm hole steeks.)

Being able to finishing this body is thanks to Julie, who sat down with me and helped me figure out the several problems I was having with the instructions.

The biggest problem with the pattern is there are instructions for both knitting flat and in-the-round, but if you are knitting in-the-round, at the placket, it tells you to follow the instructions for flat. From here on, there were problems. Beside places where the stitch count wasn't right (the number of stitches for the front shoulder seam and the back shoulder seam didn't match) going from instructions for in-the-round, to flat, and back to in-the-round was very very confusing.

You follow the flat instructions for most of the placket and at the very end you go several pages to find the rest of the instructions for finishing the placket in-the-round. BUT, the place you are to switch back to in-the-round is not noted in the flat instructions! And guess what, I didn't switch; I didn't know to switch. Thank goodness, Julie helped me figure out what to do to get back on track.

This project went from way fun to a total nightmare when I had to start knitting back and forth. You then had to deal with:

• Reading the chart backwards and forwards
  
• Skipping around in a single line of the chart 4 times each row (the 2 arm hole steeks and the packets all interrupt the chart)
  
• Color changes happening in the middle of a row. I started the rounds at the side, not knowing I would be going back and forth from the placket, so the color changes happens on one side, this meant that sometimes you had to change colors twice in one row
  
• Using two different rows on the chart for each row (because the row change was at the side)
  
• Weaving in ends twice on many rows and every other row while purling

This was my first fairisle and first steeks. If I knew when I started the project, what I know now, I'd have no problem putting in a placket steek.

I would have put the project in permanent time-out (throw it in the back of a closet and pretend it doesn't exist), but I really really wanted to finished. So I kept at it.

Have you ever noticed that once a project starts to go south, it gets worse and worse until you want to run screaming into the night? You start to hate it. You start talking to it sweetly, you bargain with it. You're convinced that it spends the time you are not working on it, plotting and scheming on how to cause you more trouble. You become frighten to take it out of the bag. But I continued working on it.

Even after I had knitted back and forth, handled all the troubles listed above, finished knitting the body, and counted, diagramed, and calculated until the seam stitch count came out, there were problems. There are supposed to be 3 button holes in the placket, I have five or maybe six (unevenly spaced). If you look at the picture, you can see three holes close to the bottom of the placket. But it's a seed stitch placket, I'm just going to sew a couple holes closed. OK, no big deal. So I'm thinking, well I'm sure glad that's over, AND just to give me one last kick in the butt, after I finished the 3-needle bindoff of the shoulder seams, I turned the sweater right side out, what do I find??!!!!

A dropped stitch! Just sticking out there grinning at me. Saying
Haa Haa, you still have problems!

Well after all the pain that I had already endured with this **** project, one little dropped stitch is like a bug when you are standing in a pond full of alligators. I grabbed a darning needle and yarn, caught that stitch, pulled it to the back and tied it off. Took about 20 seconds. I didn't even think about undoing my bindoff to fix this stitch. As a matter of fact, the only thing I though was, OH that explains why after all my careful calculations and recounting the stitches 60-hundred times, I was still off one stitch when binding off. See I was right. HA to you sweater from HE**!

I still have to knit the sleeves, which I don't care what the instructions say, I'm knitting in-the-round. I loved doing this project until the Placket He**, so I know I will enjoy knitting the sleeves. And just so the sleeves can't give me fits, I'm going to cast on provisionally, so that I knit the cuffs last and make the sleeve length correct.

OH and then there's picking up and doing the collar. But that shouldn't be any big deal. Eeeeek OH NO.... Did I just jinx the collar? I hope the sweater doesn't read this blog. I know it's just laying there planning more hurtles for me to jump!

Hmmmm... wonder how it would look without a collar?.....