Elizabeth of York - Take Three

Here is take three.  But wait, how did we get here?  One week earlier, as they say in the movies.

I had cast on my steek stitches and was happily knitting away when I discovered that I had missed 5 purl stitches in a row, way back on row 3.  I did actually drop two of the stitches down to fix them, but it was not easy, and it was late, so I set it aside to look at the next day.  Overnight I was thinking about it and decided that I wanted to start working in the round from the start.  It seemed to me that the only reason the pattern was not being worked in the round from the beginning was because you were not using both colors on all rows, but that didn't matter to me.  I do not need my steek to be the same all the way up.  Here is the steek from take three.

So, the next morning I cast on a new start, without frogging my original start, but this time I decided to try the Wild Orchid and Corn Crake again.  I do like purple and gold.  When I restarted in the round I did not use the smaller needle, I just went with the US 3 (3.25 mm) needle and a longer cord - 32", which holds the stitches perfectly, without bunching, but without stretching.

I also replaced the knot in the bottom band with the 4 knot stitch from the body, because the bottom band knots didn't pop forward as nicely.  And I discovered that two-color purling from the right side is easier (for me at least, knitting English) than two color knitting from the wrong side.  But once I got into the body pattern I decided that the Corn Crake was not providing enough contrast with the Wild Orchid and the design was getting lost.  So I frogged back my first start with the Spindrift to reclaim that yarn, and then I frogged back my second start, but only to the first two color row - so I didn't have to redo the cast-on.  I picked my stitches back up and joined the Spindrift and started on take three.

In the interim, I also charted out the right front, back and left front fully, including the interstitial stitches and the increases.  I had charted the main pattern from the book when I was working the swatch, and later added the lines indicating where the right front, the back and the left front began, but I didn't have where they ended and of course once I started working the increases I had to remember how many stitches to shift things and that was just getting to be too much work.  It was very easy just to create three new charts (save as is a wonderful feature) and then copy the appropriate columns to extend the charts out on either side of the main repeat (marking the repeat with borders) and then add a column for the interstitial stitches, plus add the columns for the increases and gray out the stitches appropriately.  I even put in the increase stitches so I wouldn't have to remember which way they needed to lean.  And the best part?  I can ditch the stitch markers, which were just getting in my way.

Pattern:  Elizabeth of York by Alice Starmore, from Tudor Roses
Yarn:  Hebridean 2-Ply in Wild Orchid and Spindrift
Needle:  US 3 (3.25 mm)