There may be trouble ahead

I was invited to a wedding that took place in April; and I'd rather like to tell you the story behind that one, because it was a mature romance and I'm always fond of those, but that would make the post too long. So instead I'm just going to tell you about that red wrap thing I'm wearing in the photo. I did say I might, after all.

I was looking for something to wear to the reception (it didn't really matter what I wore to the wedding itself, given that it was in a beautiful but freezing cold village church, so nobody was going to see it under my coat anyway), and I happened to spot this. Perfect, I thought to myself. It has elegance, style, and simplicity, plus it's a bit unusual, which I always like. And doesn't it look glamorous in the photos?

I knew even before I bought the pattern that I was going to have to tweak it. It is, basically, a scarf where the ends roll up into sleeves; and the original pattern calls for metres of stocking stitch. Not only would this drive me out of my tree to knit, but stocking stitch also has the great disadvantage of rolling up at the edges; that's not a problem if you're doing something like a jumper where the edges are joined, but for a flat piece it's not a great idea (as I discovered first-hand at the age of about twelve, when someone gave me some rather nice fuzzy yarn and I decided to knit a scarf with it - I was for ever flattening it out). So what you want is a design where the numbers of knit and purl stitches on each row is the same, or about the same, and preferably in small sections. That means either you rib it, you do some kind of moss stitch/basketwork (the borderline between the two is kind of fuzzy)... or you do a cable lattice. For me, there was no contest there.

And then I downloaded the pattern and had a look at it, and I thought... wow, those needles are way too big for DK. (I can't remember exactly what size they were, but they were too big for aran. To get a decent gauge you would have needed a chunky weight yarn.) Not wanting the finished garment to be so loose that people could see through the holes, I had to do some major recalculating. First of all I knitted a tension swatch using the cable lattice design I'd chosen (it was the same as the one I would later use for the beaded tops, and I chose it because it conveniently had equal numbers of knit and purl stitches on each row), and then from that I calculated two things: first, how many stitches I'd need in the main body of the work to get a number of stitches convenient to the design into a width slightly narrower than the width of the finished garment given in the pattern, and secondly, from that, how much yarn I was going to need. I went for "slightly narrower" because, after all, the original was stocking stitch and would curl at the edges, whereas my version wouldn't do that; so I assumed a little extra width had been allowed in the original pattern to handle that.

The sleeves, which go up to just above the elbow, are worked in rib throughout, without any increases (the rib takes care of the stretch). I think the original was 1 x 1 rib, but I prefer at least 2 x 2 for adult garments (1 x 1 is all right on the baby jumpers). Because, again, I was using smaller needles than the pattern said, I had to recalculate that too. I worked out how many stitches I'd need using an existing sleeve cuff in DK yarn (allowing for the fact that these sleeves are knitted in the round, so if you're doing 2 x 2 rib you need an exact multiple of 4), and then I had to re-jig all the increases (at one end) and corresponding decreases (at the other). By the time I'd finished with it, the knitting pattern itself was quite different, but the shape of the finished garment was almost identical.

So far, so good. I finished this thing about a week before the wedding... and I am very glad I did.

I spent most of a day wearing it around the flat. Not all day, because by about tea time it was driving me so crazy I had to take it off and put on a cardigan instead. It flatly refused to stay put. It would slide around, twist itself up, gape in places that would have been beyond embarrassing if I'd been wearing it on its own like the lady in the photos, and it pretty much felt as if I was wearing a live jellyfish, except that it was a soft fluffy one. So, the next day, I tracked down the pattern designer and e-mailed her to tell her about my experiences. (I didn't tell her I had significantly redesigned the pattern, since after all I hadn't altered the shape, so it wasn't going to affect the way it behaved when I wore it.)

She was very pleasant, but not entirely helpful. She more or less said, "oh, yes, it does tend to slide about when you wear it, so you need to wear it over something - you can't really wear it as just a top on its own." I was very tempted to ask her, in that case, why she'd had it photographed, not once but several times, worn precisely as a top on its own; however, in the interests of diplomacy I merely thanked her for the information and said I hadn't been planning to wear it on its own, but I had been planning to go to a ceilidh in it; and when you're dancing, even if you're doing so in a wheelchair, you do rather need clothing that stays where you left it.

The wedding was now fast approaching, and I didn't have anything else I could reasonably wear. So I looked hard at this thing... in fact, I'm pretty sure I glowered at it. I'd spent all that time knitting it, and no way was I going to let that go to waste.

Then the idea I needed came along. I put the wretched thing back on. I got out a box of safety pins. I pinned it to within an inch of its life until, no matter what I did, it stayed well and truly put. And then I took it off and stitched it all up solid. As you can see from the photo, that worked... and I sent another e-mail to the designer telling her so.

"Oh," she replied, "I'm so glad you found a solution!"

Why, yes. So am I. But I will not be knitting another of those things!