Bella is finished!

Yippee, I finally finished Bella Paquita yesterday! With all of the reknitting I did, I probably knit the whole thing twice.

I used Rowan Calmer, so my gauge was very different from the pattern and I had to customize everything. I also knitted the top so that the lace would start higher.

More details on the modifications are on my Ravelry project and blog post.

Chart Problems, and Trying Again

I'm just about to start knitting the top of Bella Paquita for the 3rd time. This one had better fit, or I'll be ripping the yarn into confetti!

There seems to be a problem with the medium charts. Marnie is aware that there's an issue, but has not had a chance to look into it yet. I thought I should post about it in case anyone else tries to knit the medium size in the meantime.

I would normally have knit the "small" size, but my yarn gauge is off since I'm using Rowan Calmer, which is a thinner yarn. Doing some number crunching told me that knitting the pattern in the large size should work. Unfortunately, either I messed up the math, my gauge changed, or it's just because the Calmer is so stretchy, the top ended up being a little looser than I wanted it to fit.

Looking at the difference between the medium and large bust sizes, I figured the medium would probably be fine. So off I went and knitted the top for the second time. This time it was way too small. I couldn't figure out how I could have such a huge difference, when there was only 1.75" difference between the pattern bust size for the medium and large.

Looking at all of the charts, I discovered that the chart for the medium top is smaller than the chart for the small top.

At first, I just figured that somehow the charts got switched, and that the "small" chart was really for the "medium" size, and vice-versa. But after crunching some numbers, I'm not so sure that's really the problem.

I don't know how Marnie calculated the circumference for the size dimensions, but I tried this:

Number of stitches across back at underarms x 2 (for front and back), divided by 4.5 stitches per inch = bust circumference.

Small chart: (78 st x 2) / 4.5 = 34.7"
Medium chart: (76 st x 2) / 4.5 = 33.8"
Large chart: (88 st x 2) / 4.5 = 39.1"

The pattern sizes for the bust show:

Small: 34.25
Medium: 37.5
Large: 39.25

The small and large come out very close to my calculations, but the medium is completely off. If the small and medium charts were just switched, I'd expect to see the "small" size come out closer to 37". So maybe the small is really the small, and the medium is just wrong. Or, maybe there's some other secret to calculating the bust size.

So anyway, I've spent the day working out my own chart, that's a little bigger than the 'small', and hopefully I'll come out OK.

As for the bottom and sleeve charts, it looks like the small top matches the small bottom, and the medium top matches the medium bottom (I compared the number of stitches at the join), but for the sleeves, the small sleeves are really smaller than the medium sleeves. I won't worry about the sleeves until I get there.

On the plus side, I really like how the Calmer is knitting up, so if I can get the size to work out, I'm sure it will be great.

Fifi for me-me!

Overall, this was a great knit, and I'm really happy with the results. There are a few more pictures on my blog, if you're interested.


Rowan Calmer, "Garnet" (175 yards per ball), almost 4 balls
US 4 and 5 (3.5 and 3.75 mm) circular needles and dpns
US D (3.25 mm) crochet hook

(And I'm glad I got to use the Calmer -- what a great yarn!) However, I did experience a few moments of confusion with the pattern and even, at one point (actually, um, when I was already finished), complete, dumb-struck horror.

I wanted to knit more or less the smallest size, but my gauge was off a bit, so I used the instructions for the second (33.5") size instead.

My main point of confusion was when the instructions seemed to direct me to use what I had thought were the body stitches as the sleeve stitches. After some internal debate (geez, I thought the front and back were wider than the sleeves... this doesn't sound right), I went ahead and did what I thought the pattern wanted me to do, separated the sleeves and knit a bit on the body. Then I tried it on. And it looked funny to me. The neck opening looked too narrow and rolled pretty badly along both front and back, and the sleeves were suddently huge. I ripped back and switched to the lesser number of stitches (71) for each sleeve and the greater number (81) for front and back -- much better!



Modifications: I switched to smaller needles (US 4) after 5 repeats of the 8 round "Lower Bodice" pattern to cinch in the waist a bit. I switched back to US 5's after 2 repeats. I lengthened Fifi quite a bit by knitting 11 total repeats. For the sleeves: I used the instructions for the smallest size for the decrease round and only worked one additional round on each sleeve before the final K1,P1 rib round and rib bind off. Additionally, I single crocheted around the neckline to minimize rolling.

The "dumb-struck horror" I mention above occurred after I was completely finished, I tried it on (as I'd done repeatedly throughout the knitting process) and experienced a shock to notice (for the first time!) that the region of purl stitches on one side of each center cable was one third as wide as the column on the other side, both front and back. How I didn't notice this asymmetry before is beyond me...

If you can't see it in my other photos, here's a close-up of the asymmetry (after blocking):


I hadn't previously noticed any asymmetry in the finished Fifi's I'd seen on the web, but then I started re-looking at other people's photos and realized that this asymmetry was present in all Fifi's. Clearly, it couldn't have bugged me much, since I hadn't noticed before.

During knitting, my increases (especially the Kinc's) had resulted in some obscenely loose stitches, so I went through and redistributed the slack in the diagonal "rib" of the cental panels to make things look nicer. As I did this, I tried to loosen the stitches in the narrow P2 column, and tighten the stitches in the wide P2 column. Blocking helped both issues somewhat, but didn't completely "fix" either.

I love Fifi anyway!

A bit slow on the draw...

Hello everyone!

I'm Sarah, and I'm pretty new to the group. I did lurk for a while before joining.

I've just finished my Rusted Root, and I've started working on Fifi (Calmer in Laurel).

Here's a picture of my started Fifi:















And here's my finished Rusted Root:















See more about them both on my blog:
http://spinningninny.blogspot.com

Thanks!
sarah--

Spinning Ninny

Calmer question

I swatched my Calmer and it came out true to gauge. I decided to go ahead and start knitting and my gauge seems off-- 7 stitches to the inch! Maybe this is due to the cables. At any rate, I fall between the XS and S as I need a finished garment that measures about 31 inches. I'm thinking that I'll just go ahead and make the small since my gauge is smaller. This stuff really stretches so I know it will fit, if not be a little big. My question is --for those of you who have used this yarn before--does Calmer stretch out and sag while it's being worn? If not, then I'm okay. I've done cotton things before that fit when you put them on then 6 hours later they appear to be a size or two too big! Will the stretch in this yarn prevent this from happening?
Thanks!