Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Trial and Error

Sometimes you just have to keep trying until something works.  That's been especially true with the edging for the poncho.  I don't think I've ever had such a time with a design.

I started the edging with an I-cord that was supposed to be the outside edging but as I worked it, I realized that it was pulling in on that side so that would need to be the side attached to the body.  Fine, no problem.  That would give a nice flow from the body to the edging.

I did a light block on the body and as I worked the edging, I would lay the edging around to see how close I was to getting it long enough.  When I got close to what I thought was the finish, I started attaching the edging to the body so I could knit to the very end and have a nice tight finish.  But when I  got to the end of the edging, it looked like it was way short.  What?!

I thought the edging I had should have fit almost all the way around but I kept knitting, adding another 8 inches or so until it went all the way around.  Great, right?  Well, great until I tried it on and found that the edging was all wavy.  Arghhhhh!!!!!

I then had to take the edging completely off (about 110 inches of edging, by the way) and re-attach with better spacing.  Once I did that, I then had to rip out about 6 inches of the edging that I'd knit before, taking into account that I needed to make the braid from the beginning flow into the braid at the end.

Done.

Good.  Now I needed to figure out what to do with the outside edge to finish it off.  It was really rough so I decided to crochet around the edge to give it a little form but it needed something else.  I only had part of one skein of yarn left so I had to be a little careful.  As an old crocheter, if all else fails, use a shell stitch.  So that's what I did and it worked perfectly.  Here's the final product that is worth all the hassle of making sure it was right in the end.

 
Of course, it ain't over till the blocking's done.  Sometimes it makes all the difference.

It ended up being the perfect length and the perfect circumference.  Some of that was guess work and some of that was experience and some of that was pure old trial and error.

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