Vendange - One Skein Down

I've been mostly working on my cabled sweater.  After working my gauge swatch and doing some math I determined that I needed 230 stitches to get the width called for in the smallest size.  One of the challenges of making adjustments with this pattern is the placement of the side panels and the width of the stockinette sections between them.  I played around with the math for a bit, but then decided to take the easy way out.  I looked at the cast on stitches for the other sizes to see where my 230 stitches fell.  Turns out, it fell between two sizes, the third size at 222 cast on stitches and the fourth size at 238 cast on stitches.  Given my size in relation to the finished measurements I decided to go with the lower number and cast on 222 stitches.  Based on the yarn requirements, this should still give me enough to do the longer coat.

The yarn is okay to work with, not as refined as most of the other yarns that I use.  I suppose you could describe it as rustic, which I think is appropriate for the pattern.  It does have some vegetative matter in it, but not too much, and there are some inconsistencies in the spinning, but overall it is good to work with.  It is odd to be working with size 8 needles.  I am so used to working with the smaller needles that these feel huge.

I'm using knitCompanion on my iPad, but I did manage to crash my app.  I was using smart counters and decided to put in the decrease rows.  I had gotten everything entered and was getting the count back to where I was and when I hit my first decrease row the app crashed and due to the fact that when you go back in it will usually try to go back to your current project I couldn't get back into the app.  So I went to my settings and clicked on the app there and there was an option to bypass the last project, which I clicked, and then I was able to get back in to the app.  It still crashed when I tried to go into the project so I ended up deleting the project and setting it back up again.  A bit of a pain, and it means I lost my cumulative project time (the app keeps track of how long you work on a project), but at least I was able to recover.  Maybe I need to upgrade my tech.  I have an iPad 2.  About a month ago I tried to upgrade to iOS 9 and my iPad locked up.  I was really afraid that I had bricked it, but I left it on until the battery died and when I plugged it back in it rebooted and was fine.  I haven't tried to upgrade my iOS since.  There is a new iPad out, the iPad Pro, that is larger, which I think might be nice for those larger knitting charts...maybe for Christmas...

Pattern:  Vendange by Anne Hanson
Yarn:  Bare Naked Wools Confection Worsted
Needle:  US 8 (5.0 mm)