Heave Ho!

I started trying to frog Cloud 3 and gave up after half an hour. I couldn't undo the seams so I cut off the buttons and put the whole thing in the bin.

Then I threw away my third attempt at the Aran shrug - the one made by knitting together four strands from a cone of 2-ply wool. It looked rubbish. I won't do that again. (One strand with another yarn can look OK, though.)

I would have thrown away the garter stitch jacket I made such a mess off as well, being in a kind of bury your mistakes mood, but we are decorating so I couldn't get into the cupboard.

Then I got out the yarn I'm collecting for a Ralph Lauren ski sweater. I keep picking up odds and ends of brown and orange yarn, and I still don't have enough! I pulled back my first attempt. I'd done a back and a sleeve which were wrong in so MANY ways. I did these before my Lucy Neatby DVD's arrived, and I can see that I'm improving. I threw away all the small lengths of yarn. I did keep the brown background colour. I can wash the wrinkles out of it if I need it to finish the garment.

Ended up with two piles of yarn and realised that they fell into warm and cool colours. The reason I don't have enough for one jumper is that I only like the cools together and the warms together. They don't look right mixed. Put it all away. Will carry on collecting odd balls. One day I'll have enough!

Then I finished a tea cosy in mistake rib. The teapot lives 30 miles away, so it's a test item in an odd ball of brown tweed. Mistake rib is lovely. It would make a good man's sweater.

Office Chair Wearing a Shrug

With washing in the background! At last I have finished a garment which looks like the picture in the pattern and fits me. Fourth time lucky! This has got to be a mile stone! The shrug looks better on a person, but I don't think I will make a 'real' one. It's maybe a tall person's garment.

Using progressively bigger needles to make the collar worked very well. One sleeve is wider at the bottom than the other one, which is odd, because the stitch count is exactly the same. I had to frog the I-cord edging three times and they still don't match exactly, but good enough.

Reasonable Progress

Just started decreasing for the second arm. Is this going to be the one that fits?

Knitting a Cosy

My friend's teapot needs a cosy. Here's a picture. I will look for a good pattern. Colour work? Cartoon character? No frills? There's so many things to decide. I'll have plenty of time to decide, because the cream Aran shrug is far from finished. It's been a busy week so not much knitting got done.

I can purl backwards quickly and easily now, so that technique was well worth learning. It makes bobbles easy to do. What I can't get the hang of is cabling without a needle. I did try, but it's so much easier with a needle! Every time I slide the stitches off the main needle they instantly and viciously unravel. Then I have to spend ages poking around with a crotchet hook to get them all back. I've given up for this now, but I might try again on a different Aran project.

Cinderella Shrug

Look what my fairy godmother brought me! 24 balls of cream Aran yarn (which smells and burns like wool) for £5. I just happened to walk past a charity shop and it was in the window calling to me: 'Don't give up, Cinders. You shall have a cream Aran Shrug.'

Started right away. I know the pattern off by heart now. The first attempt is on 5 mm needles and it is too tight and slightly too small. Began again on 6 mm needles.

Because there's only one strand, I decided to try cabling without a needle again. I can cross a single stitch OK, but every time it comes to three stitches, the last one pops out of the stitch and begins to unravel. I have to keep a crotchet hook and emergency cable needle close by. Much cursing on my part. Andy said: 'You have a cable needle. Why don't you use it?'
I said: 'Because it's quicker.' He gave me a long, thoughtful look and said: 'It'd be quicker to go to the shop and buy a jumper.'

Well, yes, but that's not the point, is it?

No Cable Needles were Harmed in the Making of this Swatch

Actually, it wasn't meant to be a swatch, it was meant to be my third attempt at the cabled Aran shrug, but I was concentrating so hard on knitting backwards and cabling without a needle that I got one stitch out somewhere and I couldn't get the next panel straight. I've been playing with it while waiting to hear back about Cloud 3, and now I have help with those pesky decreases, it's time to go back to Cloud anyway. So I cast it off, called it a swatch and threw it in the washer with yesterday's muddy gaiters to see how the yarn would stand it. That large cone was 50p. Two strands held together make a good Aran weight yarn. From the cone, the yarn is a bit stiff and smells faintly of machine oil. Washed it softens nicely and smells only of washing powder. It doesn't smell of wool, burns brightly and leaves a blobby residue rather than ash, so I think it must be mostly artificial fibre. However it's very flexible when wet and has felted slightly, so it might have a bit of wool in it. When I make the shrug, I'll hand wash it, I think, to be on the safe side.

I've just about got the hang of cabling without a needle now - the trick is to drop the stitches off the needle, freeze, and then stop breathing until the cable is done and the stitches are safely back on the needle. Or in other words, keep everything as still as possible while working. Knitting, or rather purling backwards to do the bobbles is hard. My poor head goes into meltdown at the very idea. At the moment it takes three times longer because I have to turn the work around, see where the yarn and needles should be for each step of the process, then turn the work back and have a bash. Then I realise I've got it all wrong. Undo it. Start again. Just once or twice have I managed to purl the last stitch of the three bobble stitches backwards, but by the time I've knitted three I've forgotten again. Never mind. It'll come. It's not that I'm planning to knit that many bobbles, but think how useful knitting backwards will be for knitted-on edges.

Red Cabled Aran Shrug is Finished

But it's too small, and impossible to photograph. I took it to see my friend Ricky, who has a camera bristling with apertures and F stops and who knows how to use them. I said: 'I can't photograph this red knitting.' He looked at the knitting using my camera first. I think we both thought I'd have some inappropriate setting or other turned on, but it was all working perfectly, except for the fact it was impossible to focus on the red fabric. Ricky started to make humming noises and went and got his own camera. Rick takes wonderful pictures, in fact one of his photos of Salzburg cathedral might be going into a guide book soon, but the humming noises got louder as he looked at my red knitting and twiddled knobs, filters and buttons. Then he shook his head.

You can't photograph that red knitting - how odd! I wanted a picture showing the sleeve ends - I hadn't been happy with just leaving the bottoms of the sleeves. My inner neat freak didn't like the fact that the cast on didn't match the cast off, and it just looked messy somehow. I put an I-cord around the bottom of the cuff, and it looked great - it didn't change the look of the garment, but it neatened up the edges and made the sleeves look finished. I tried picking up and knitting, then doing the I-cord, but that was too bulky. Picking up a stitch, then doing the I-cord worked perfectly.

However, the whole garment is a breath too small - even with my triangular inserts under the arms. 'Did you knit that for the same person as you made the rib warmer for?' Andy asked. The sleeves are the right length now, but the body of the garment is a fraction tight. And I don't see how you can fix that without the body going floppy again. So that's why people invented sleeves!!

I knitted the cowl to 10" but that was too much. Around 8 and a quarter was perfect. I've put the finished in my drawer along with the rib warmer and am now looking for a small person who wants TWO hand knitted garments. The good news is that Andy's sister has decided she likes the shrug I gave her - she wore it over Christmas and enjoyed it.

Seeing as I can't photograph the shrug, I've posted another nostalgia photo. Look what tiny living spaces people squeeze into in Japan. I'm trying to knit Kaffe Fasset's Persian Poppy design - the whole thing was a disaster that never got finished. I have to make a garment using that design - talk about unfinished business!!

Patricia Roberts Jumper

It's quite handy having nostalgia week this week because I can't get a photo of the red Aran cabled shrug and I don't know why - will be asking advice from a friend who's good at photography.

The cable strip is finished - it's 55" long, a little longer than I calculated, but the sleeves are too tight at the top. Decided to knit a little triangle and sew it in to give more room - but how will that affect the ribbing? Only one way to find out.

Patricia Roberts was all the rage when I lived in London in the 80s. She had a bijou shop in Kensington Church Gardens - all wooden floors and model shop assistants who looked down their noses like camels. I remember saving up and going over there to buy the mohair for the easiest garment in one of her books (most of them were made with tiny needles and yarn - completely beyond me). I wore the sweater a lot - in the photo above, I'm actually 'working'. I used to be a kind of urban park ranger on a disused railway line that was managed for ecological benefit. We held moth trapping sessions at night, which I wasn't paid for, but I think I got time off in lieu for. Everyone, scientists, eco-warriers, middle-class enthusiasts and parkies alike drank or smoked or both. It seems odd now, which proves that the government is achieving their aim of 'denormalising' drinking and smoking. All to the good, yet I miss the days before AWFUL WARNINGS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!

Cabling Without a Needle

Isn't this a terrible picture? I don't know what it is about this red wool, but I can't seem to get a photo of it at all. This is the best of about 50 attempts. I tried it light in front, light behind, light from the side,with a flash,without a flash, near the window, far from the window. I give up. You'll just have to imagine it.

There's two wobbles in the last cable diamond where I dropped a stitch, fudged it for 10 rows, found the dropped stitch, picked it up with a crotchet hook and then had to undo the fudge. I'm not going to redo it.

And what am I doing, dropping stitches? Trying to cable without a needle, that's what. And I can't do it. Lucy Neatby demonstrates the art on her knitting DVD. She says something like: 'Your stitches won't go anywhere. They are not malevolent.' Well, mine are! The second I let them go, they prang about all over the place. 'Quick! Head for the hills! Hey, I know. Let's go to Skegness. Louise'll never notice.'

I need to learn, because it is going to be so much quicker. I must have spent about three hours of this week looking for my cable needle. But I'm not finding it easy. Lucy slips three stitches off the main needle, puts them to the back of the work and they stay there while she knits the next stitches, then goes back and picks them up to complete the twist or cable. I can almost, sometimes do the cable where you put one stitch behind your work, knit three then pick up the one. I have to pull it off the needle, then out, so that it enlarges, then hold it down with a finger so it doesn't head for a seaside resort, then pull it out again, because the loop will be hardly visible, it will have shrunk so much, and then, finally, slip it back on the needle to work with. Three I cannot do. The last stitch always, always, always ladders down at once.

I wonder if the reason I can't cable without a needle is connected to my lack of knitting success in general? Am I somehow not smooth enough? If I'm jerking my knitting around as I work, in both senses of the word, is it getting p**ed off at me? Or to leave the metaphor and descend to the technical, are there uneven points of stress in the fabric? It's something to think about.

The ribwarmer is nearly done - I need to watch Meg Swanson on the DVD showing the short rows at the back neck and then I can attempt the three-needle I-Cord cast off on the shoulders.

I'm practising the Portuguese knitting at odd moments - about 10 minutes a day, perhaps. It's a bit soon to decide how fast a technique it might be.

Stash and Speed Knitting

I don't know when I'll ever actually need a cone of gold yarn, but it was so cute and so sparkly I couldn't leave it be. The reel of gold sewing thread was inside the cone. The vintage 4-ply is a pretty mushroom pink and it is real wool. 4-ply is a great weight for a centrally heated world, and once I can knit, I expect to buy lots of it for the second good reason that it's cheaper because it lasts longer. For now, though, I'm enjoying Aran weight knitting. Last night I knit another diamond panel for the Aran cable shrug, and a few more inches of the rib warmer. Knitting it up in one piece makes it impossible to photograph - unless I could get some plastic ants to march around the edge to demonstrate which line is going where, it just looks like a blot and tangle. Which of course, it may yet turn out to be.

The Portuguese knitting is going well - on the whole. I can make the movements now, but it looks like a beginner's knitting! It will probably take months to get it smooth. The one thing I'm struggling most with is how to feed the yarn from my right hand up to the knitting pin. I suppose it'll be a combination of tiny movements - a knack that will come with time. Andrea doesn't mention it (which is probably why I'm struggling - she explains everything else). I had a look at the clips on You Tube. Some of them show you how people wrap the yarn around their fingers, but none of them explain what to do to feed the yarn up to the pin. I expect it will come. I will persevere because I like the feel of knitting this way - it is easier to do without looking, great for watching TV, which is when I knit, and it feels more relaxed than Continental.

I then got sucked into watching loads of great little video clips - the world's fastest knitter was one. The first tip she gave was to relax! Then she said knit at the tips of the needles, which I do now, and have noticed made me a little faster, and then it was a case of making tiny movements. Interesting. I also watched a clip of the Yarn Harlot doing Irish Cottage Knitting. A lot of women in Lancashire knit this way - with a long needle tucked under the arm. It doesn't look relaxing to me. I dislike long needles - I don't like the weight of them and I don't like them tapping on my arm (yeah, OK, I probably do something wrong!). The very large movements, which may be better for your hands, take up space, somehow. I think I'll stick with Portuguese.

Messing About with Knitting

I've got too many projects on the go! This weekend I have been learning to knit with the yarn round my neck, trying to finish the Simple Garter Stitch Jacket, making a ribwarmer in one piece and working on the Aran Cabled Shrug. I thought again of the BBC time management experts (whose names I can never remember, two little chaps in suits). They were trying to stop one woman from flitting from task to task, so they laid out some kids puzzles and timed her while she did them, first in her usual pick up and drop manner, secondly not moving on until the puzzle she was working on was complete - result? Sticking to one project at a time is 30% faster.

We are both tired so this weekend we did nothing - I had a lot of knitting time but most of it was spent wrestling with the garter stitch jacket. I'm struggling with the patch pockets at the top. I undid the messiest pocket flap and tried out several edgings, but none of them looked right, so I might just re knit the pocket flap and trust it will look OK when it's got a button and a crotchet edging.

The ribwarmer is going well. I had some maroon Aran in my stash which is interesting to work with - it's very rough and scratchy - it spit splices like a dream! This is good for the ribwarmer, because there is nowhere to hide any ends. It's interesting how some yarn will splice easily, and other yarns go dirty and little ends poke out. I think roughness is the key - smooth yarns don't cling the same way. I'm following the DVD and trying out several new techniques. Meg Swanson uses the 'twisty-wrap' provisional cast on, so I used Lucy Neatby's crotchet version, which is much, much easier to do. I'm using a braid edging (except where I forget to do it) and knitting up the back in one piece.

I got into a mess with the shrug and ended up frogging two panels. The problem was caused by following the chart accurately. How unfair is that? I have discovered that the cable repeat along the side is a 6 stitch repeat, and the diamond panel is a 28 stitch repeat. 6 does not go into 28 and the bottom of the chart does not correspond to the top of the chart - so there I was in cable hell. It took some time to work out what was happening and why I was going wrong, but at least I understand it now! I've bought a knitting notebook (and A4 sketch pad with a spiral binding) and it's full of scribbles and curses!

Got it Taped

Last week someone said to me that they wished they had a hobby they could spend money on. I kind of know what they mean - I've had lots of fun with exciting parcels arriving this week. As soon as the tangle over a different Louise Armstrong cancelling my knitting order was straightened out, the Woolly Workshop got my order sent first class and it arrived today. I ordered 3.5 wooden needles in the end. They look lovely - and are so light. Knitting the first panel of my shrug on 5 mm metal needles made my hands ache - there's a huge weight difference. I can't wait to try wooden ones out. I don't know why I didn't order wooden needles to knit my shrug on? I knew it was next in the queue. Oh well. For the second panel I changed to my lovely Addi circular needles. There's a bit of excess wire flipping around, but they are light.

I've come to a halt on the Simple Garter Stitch Jacket - my attempt at pocket flaps is nasty. I'm considering not having pockets at all, and trimming it in garter stitch I-cord instead of crotchet. I've put it to one side to think about.

As you can see, (apologies for the lousy picture but I couldn't get the chart and the knitting in focus at the same time) I couldn't resist casting on for the next Aran cable shrug so I could try my new toy - highlighter tape. It is brilliant - at the moment you can't seem to get it anywhere but the Woolly Workshop but I'm sure it will catch on. I can't imagine ever using a lace, intarsia, Fair Isle or Aran chart ever again without this handy dandy little aid. I have tried using a ruler, but it always moves, and also, I often need to see where I've been so that I can understand what I'm supposed to be doing on top of it. This tape is perfect. Because this is a free pattern printed out from the Internet, the ink is lifting slightly, which wouldn't happen if you were using a book, but one strip of tape still did two diamond repeats or about 60 rows. It might well have done more, but I was mad to try another colour! The green is pretty good too.

I have made a couple of errors, but overall, this is the most accurate cable knitting I've ever done and, as an agreeable side effect, it makes me faster! No stopping to count rows and stitches, no pausing to scratch my head and wonder where I am. No frogging and re knitting. With the first shrug, I was completing a panel repeat in an evening, and sometimes, if I'd gone very wrong, I'd sit up a little later in order to finish. Using the tape, in the same time, I did a panel repeat and 6 more rows. Good - I like anything that makes me faster!

A text came today saying: 'Thank you for the Alien Shrugigan Cardiug'. This suggests that Andy's sister may not yet be completely in love with her Shrug. Had visions of it being stuffed in a cupboard unless we came round: 'Quick, get out the Alien! Louise is visiting.' Texted back to say seriously no offence if she wants to chuck it out or pass it on.

I Give Away a Shrug

A mixed success, as you can see - it's great to have produced a garment which I like the look of. It's a shame it doesn't fit me by miles! I think what's happened here is overcompensation. I knew several of these shrugs had turned out too small, so I thought, right! Mine's not going to have that fault...

I will make another one of these - but I will knit the 10 diamonds that the pattern suggests and not 12. I think the rib section is only just big enough. I cast the usual proportion for ribbing - pick up 3 and skip one all along the edge, which gave slightly more stitches than the pattern suggested. I think it needs one stitch picking up for every stitch. Following a helpful suggestion from Ravelry, I knit the rib section in the round, which worked really well and eliminates a seam. I also changed needle size - pick up on one smaller, first few inches in the same size as the body (5.5mm) then a few inches in 6 mm, 6.5 mm and 7 mm. I had to stop there because I've no bigger circular needles. Then I cast off in rib. This tip came from a Lucy Neatby DVD - and the ribbing did look nice - it wanted to turn over and lie prettily. I might make it a few inches deeper as well.

It's so hard to measure knitting. Andy helped me with this one and it still came out wrong. He fits kitchens. He wallpapers. He cuts holes in £500 doors to fit the furniture. He can build a kitchen extension - and all his building stuff turns out perfectly. What is it about knitting? When I picked up my simple garter stitch jacket again at the weekend, there were 3 people in the room. I had pulled out the needles and forgotten to write down what I was using, so I knit up a tiny swatch along 10 stitches of the garment until I thought I had it right. Then I checked with the others, just to be on the safe side. Andy said: you need a bigger needle. Rick said: I think she needs a smaller needle. And Stewart said: I don't know.

The shrug saga doesn't end too badly though. When I knit a sweater for Andy's sister, she asked me to knit the sleeves 2" longer than usual because she has very long arms. Remembering this I took her the shrug. She wasn't too sure about the construction, never having owned or worn such a strange item - but it fitted her so I insisted that she take it. Hopefully she'll decide that she likes shrugs, I thought she looked smart in it, but then, I'm biased - it's my baby!

Half Way There on the Aran Panel

Eight Panels done and only half way there? Didn't the pattern say 10 panel repeats made a whole garment? Well, yes, but I thanks to the advice from the Ravelry members, I'm trusting a tape measure more than the pattern. I'm also trying it on a lot.

Here's an interesting fact - and one that might explain why people found this shrug came out too short for them. The pattern shows the garment laid out flat. When I measured myself (with Andy's help) I stood up and put my arms out straight. My arm span measured 53 and a half inches. The small size is 54 inches, so, I'll knit the small length I said. BUT, Andy is a careful soul (he works with expensive materials) and he said: 'Put your arms down and measure.' This time I measured 57 inches, much closer to the large size of 60". That's a huge difference, certainly enough to ruin a garment.

Exploring this finding further, we measured Andy first with his arms up and then with his arms held down. The difference in measurements was the same. Then we measured a fleece that fits him perfectly. The fleece, when laid flat on the ground, measured the same across the arm span as Andy did with his arms held down. In other words, you need the larger measurement, the one that you get with your arms held down, in order to get the sleeves long enough. So you have to be careful when you measure yourself. It is safe, however, to measure a favourite garment, because that will come out at the larger size.

Very, very interesting!

I got lost a few times in the pattern - because the increase was every eight rows, and you did it 8 times, I got the number eight in my head, and started making the cable twist every 8 rows instead of every 6 rows. I'm not frogging! I'll just be more careful from now on and if I make a 'real' one I'll count the rows as I go.

Pause for Thought

I completed two of the panel repeats, then followed Maggie Richetti's advice and put the work on a thread so that I could Knit Klip it together, try it on and measure it and think about it. Very interesting. I started measuring in metric, but caught myself just in time. Never again! 4" in not the same as 10 cm, whatever the pattern might say. Now I always measure in the system that the designer used. This is an American pattern, so imperial all the way.

I do not like baggy sleeves, so it feels exactly right at the moment, but several people said it turned out small, so it probably won't be wide enough at the top. OK, I'll carry on increasing for the large size, but because I started increasing every 8 rows (as given for small) and not every 10 rows (as given for large) I'll carry on doing this so the increases are in proportion. And I will write all this down, so that I know what to do on the other side!!

Each repeat is 4.75 inches - so even my math knows that 10 panels will not make 60". I will knit two extra pattern repeats. This being so, I need to stop after one more panel repeat, put it back on the thread and see what I think about the placing of the markers for the back panel.

I feel as if all the kind advice I received from the Ravelry knitters will bring me luck. I'm sure this will be the garment I wear!

When I was making the various swatches a few days ago, I used a pair of Clover needles I bought years ago when I lived in Japan. This pair were white plastic with yellow tips, and the coloured tips helped me understand why my tension in the Turbulence U-necked sweater got smaller and smaller as I went. I suddenly realised that I wasn't pushing the newly formed loops off the tapered tips and onto the main part of the needle.

I'm trying to follow Lucy Neatby's instructions to knit on the tips of the needle because my knitting used to get larger and larger as I used to stretch the original stitch by shoving a complete second needle in. Knitting at the tips avoids this. BUT the second error I was falling in to was knitting at the tips, and not making sure the new loop went off the tip and onto the body of the needle so that it formed the correct size. And not knowing that I was doing any of this meant that none of my stitches were consistent. Leading to knitting hell. This could be a useful discovery.

Hurray for the Cavalry @ Ravelry

Before I went to work yesterday I went onto Ravelry (the Internet knitting community) and emailed a couple of people who had already made the Aran shrug. When I got home from work I had replies from around the world. Isn't the Internet brilliant?

The people who had most liked the shrug were those who didn't bother much with tension (gauge). The shrug had turned out too small or the neck hadn't worked for a couple of people, which suggests to me that there are problems in the pattern. Experienced knitters were able to jump over the hurdles, others smacked into the barriers caused by a less than perfect pattern.

Me? With my history of failure, shouldn't I quit now? But I like this shrug!! Decided to carry on, bearing in mind all the kind words and shared experiences sent by the other knitters, I'm going to try to apply common sense to the garment and see if I can make it work.

Above is the swatch that I'm keeping. (I've used a ball and half just swatching!). It's knit on 5.5 mm needles and the yarn is Pingoun Aran - I have 11 balls (Or I did have!) and another ball that I started to knit some fair isle mittens with and got bored. I can rescue that if I need to. I also have some green mohair which I can use as a contrasting trim if I run out of yarn.

The row gauge is slightly too small, and my favourite jacket measures one inch more than the given size for the smaller version, so I'm going to knit the larger size. A jolly Californian knitter suggested changing needle size for the collar to get the larger gauge. A light bulb went off in my head. Do I not own a DVD with Lucy Neatby demonstrating how to make a rib roll-neck sit beautifully by changing needle size as you work? If you knit an inch, then change to a larger needle, knit another inch and change up again, the rib expands slightly and wants to lie flat. It's a nice theory, isn't it?

Well, I'm committed now. Here we go...

Tension Hell

I should have known there was no easy knitting! I gave up on the 'Simple' (the very word makes me want to scream) jacket. I should have ignored the word simple in the title and paid more attention to the two star rating. I'm beginning to realise that I'm a one star kind of knitter.

So, I rummaged in my stash, fetched out some Aran and waded in to the cabled Aran shrug. You can buy the Crystal Palace yarns here, if the test is a success. Which it already isn't. I didn't rush in! I don't deserve to suffer - I was a good knitter and checked Ravelry first. About a dozen people had knit the cabled shrug. Nobody reported any horrors, although one person hated the finished garment and one said she'd made one for her mum, who loved it. Which made me wonder about the fashion element inherent in that statement. Which then made me wonder about my attitude to mothers. Hopefully it was a mother of the fashionable variety who loved that shrug.

So, after checking I waded in. I knit a half swatch and got the stocking stitch tension of 14 stitches and 19 rows. I cast on, and bar a few of the inevitable snarls caused by me mixing with cables, I did 5 happy inches. And then I stopped to measure. Oh my paws and whiskers. What is going on here? It was far too big - and open and sloppy. I went back to the pattern. Oh, yes, they give a second tension for the Aran panels. I did notice that, but I remember deciding to knit on and check the tension once I'd done a few inches. The tension for the Aran panel is 21 stitches and 21 rows. Wait a minute, here! Isn't that rather a long way away from 14 stitches and 19 rows? In the same piece of fabric? No needle change or anything.

I've spend several hours wrestling with this and coming to no useful conclusion. I started again on needles that got 21 stitches in the Aran, but it looks too small and the row tension is off. Calculating the pattern repeat I can see that it would be 35" long instead of 54" long. This is progress. Once over I'd have knit the whole thing and then found that out!

Baffled! I wish I'd stuck to baffling short rows now. Now I have two garments in pieces that I can't do. To make matters worse, we called in at a yarn store. Oh, the glory of real wool! I wish I could knit.