Wednesday 26 November 2014

Headdesk

Ever get those days when you wonder what the heck your brain is on? The body of my sweater is done, and I cast on for the first sleeve. Five inches in, I come to this instruction:

*sm, k10 rows. sm, k1, M1L, k to 1 st before marker, M1R, k1* 5 times.

Now I had no excuse. It was 9:30 in the morning, I slept well, and had nothing more muddling than tea to drink or eat. I've known how to read for over 3 decades, and I swear, I can follow instructions to knit complex articles. But for some reason, my brain totally skipped the asterisk at the beginning of the line, and relocated it to after the instruction to knit 10 rows.

I read it, and wondered why you would put all your increases for the sleeve in 5 rows, all bunched together. I read it again, and noted that the diagram for the sleeve had no indication of this shaping. I knitted the 5 increase rows, decided it looked weird, and thought I would have to rejig the pattern. Read it AGAIN, did the math, looked at the rest of the sleeve instructions, and figured that my sleeve would end up more than half a foot short following the directions, and no-one on Ravelry had noted this kind of a serious shortfall in the pattern. So I read the line yet again, very carefully, and this time it registered. That asterisk at the beginning of the line. Knit 10 rows, do an increase row, knit another 10 rows, then do the next increase row!

I think it's going to work a lot better now.

No comments:

Post a Comment