Pink Sundae Camisole: What happened next.

We left off last post with the bottom edge of my camisole looking huge. In every single book on knitting I have ever read (and I’ve read several), the knitter is instructed to start by making up a swatch to check for gauge. I didn’t do that. I should have. It turns out that with the needles specified by the designer, my camisole was heading into XL territory.  What did I do? The only sensible thing I could do: I frogged it, very carefully rewinding my yarn onto the empty toilet paper roll. The stuff at the beginning was getting really ratty by this time. To make it even rattier, I then pulled out my 2.25 mm needles, and knit myself a swatch. Specified gauge was 31 st = 4 in on 2.75 mm needles. I made my swatch 31 stitches wide with 4-stitch borders of garter. When I measured, I was still 2 stitches too loose. What to do?

I stroked my chin and thought about this. I could always try again with even smaller needles OR I could take advantage of my loose tension and knit the smaller size. Less knitting overall, right? So I did that, frogging my swatch (carefully rewinding it onto the roll) and then casting on for the small size with the 2.25 mm circular needle. Luckily the rattiest of the yarn ended up in the first five rows before the picot edge and is hidden in behind. In one place, the yarn actually came apart in my hands, but it was very easy to splice in without any tails to darn in later. I even caught the cast-on tail in the turned edging. Rather clever of me, no?

Unlike the other attempts, this one has been going problem-free. I hesitate to say that out loud, lest the knitting kobolds come out of the skeins and play havoc with my project. I am now into the decreases and have enough fabric made to warrant a photo or two. I have two, in fact. Here they are.

I had to pin it for the photo as the knitting is extremely curly. I have great faith that blocking will solve that issue. I think I am sufficiently satisfied with my progress that I can stop talking about this and just post photos when it’s done. Although, since the pattern calls for a separately-knitted upper edge attached via picked-up stitches and a three-needle bind-off, and I plan to do things differently, you might be seeing more of this camisole here before then.

Keep those kobolds at bay!