Mariposa Tee - Clue 3 Done!

Remember when I mentioned about a project coming together easily meaning that it was meant to be?  Well, the opposite is also true.  If a project is giving me a lot of trouble I figure it is time to rethink it.  Maybe the yarn and the pattern are not a good match, or there is something with the construction that is causing problems, or maybe I just don't approach a pattern the same way that the designer does.  This top was a problem project.  Beautiful yarn, beautiful pattern, but I kept making mistakes and it was frustrating me and making me work way too hard.  Knitting should be fun.  Life is just too short to spend time on things that are supposed to be fun but for some reason are not.

So a couple of weeks ago I was sitting in my office listening to a telecon working on this project when I made another mistake, which I didn't notice until I was knitting the row above it.  The pattern had been giving me trouble as soon as I finished with the ribbing.  You see, the round began at one of the sides, so it split up the lace pattern, and led to that horrible spiral jog that is inevitable when knitting in the round.  And then, you get around to the other side where the lace pattern is and the instructions say to knit the left chart and then the right chart, but as you're sitting there looking at your knitting the left chart is on the right and the right chart is on the left while on the pattern page the left chart is on the left and the right chart is on the right, which was causing me all manner of confusion.  So there I was, sitting in my office, listening to a telecon and staring at my mistake and I decided to just rip out everything that I had done and start it all over.

Well, almost everything.  I ripped back to the ribbing and picked the stitches back up, but this time I put the round marker in the center of the back.  Then, on my set up row I made sure that the lace pattern would line up with the ribbing (it wasn't before, and that was something else that was bugging me).  I also cut out those two charts on my pattern instruction page and taped them back down again so that I could work the charts in order, from right to left, the way knitting charts are supposed to be read when you are working in the round.  I also adjusted the waist shaping, which was really low and seemed very compressed to me, so that it would match my shape, which is somewhat high waisted.  After I did all of that this project just sailed right along, no problems at all, which is the way it is supposed to be.

Here is a picture of the lace panel, lining up with the ribbing just as it should.  It is a little thing, but as we know little things matter (right Frodo?).

Pattern:  Maripos Tee by Michelle Miller
Yarn:  Zen Yarn Garden Serenity Worsted in Carnival
Needle:  US 8 (5 mm)