A tale of three swatches

Last week I started the Cotton Chenille Baby Cardigan for Gaia. It just wasn't knitting up the way I had envisioned. My original swatch knitted up exactly to gauge... 4 sts = 1" on size 6 needles. But the fabric was far too loose. Even the multicolor bauble trim looked funny. So I did another swatch on size 4 needles, and another on size 2's. After washing them it was clear that the cotton wasn't going to shrink enough to tighten up the fabric very much. So off to the frog pond with the back, which was almost finished. (At least baby sweaters aren't that big... it is much more painful to frog the back of an adult sweater!)

I'm going with the size 2 needles, though it isn't easy knitting the heavy chenille yarn on such tiny needles. While I was at it, I'm redoing the multicolor trim -- instead of baubles a plain garter stitch. Much easier on the fingers with this yarn, and I think it looks better. It's beginning to look like I knit the way I cook... the pattern is like a recipe, just a set of suggestions rather than commandments.

It was a busy week at the frog pond. While there I had to rip a whole 16-or-so rows of the sleeve of my Hanne Falkenberg Lastrada. It was my own stupid fault -- I read the chart wrong and knit two rows of the wrong color, and it was a long time before I noticed. The good news... they were sleeve rows with 70-something stitches, and not body rows, with 400-something stitches, or I might have thrown myself right into the pond!