Saturday, April 7, 2007

I finally finished the fronts of Dollar, but not without great angst. The decreases in the lace drove me crazy. I knit, unknit, reknit, and re-unknit until I was ready to scream. Numerous times I'd decrease a stitch, only to discover a few rows later that I now had 2 more stitches in that section than before the decrease.

Part of the trouble was that I was knitting both fronts at the same time. That worked great up until I started doing the decreases. Then it got really complicated trying to keep track of the increases on both sides of both pieces (and decreasing on the right side of one, and the wrong side of the other), plus keeping track of the cable pattern. I finally gave up and put one side on a stitch holder, and worked each side separately. That went much better. Unless you're a really good knitter, I'd highly recommend doing that, even if you want to knit both sides together up to where the decreases start.

One thing that finally clicked for me and made things easier was that when decreasing on row 3 or 5 of the lace pattern (the rows with the PSSO), the way to do it is to just follow the pattern for that row without any changes. Instead, you'll really make the decrease on the next row by omitting the last YO in the pattern. Veronik mentions that in her tutorial, but I really didn't "get" what she meant from reading her instructions. You will occasionally end up with 4 stockinette stitches together at the neck edge for a row or two, but it works out OK.

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