I finished up the ribbing last night and started working the cable design. The gauge for the ribbing was given as 24 stitches and 23 rounds in four inches. Now measuring in ribbing is always a bit problematic because of the stretchiness, but looking at it on the needles, I think I’m pretty good. I am a little shy of four inches in height at 23 rounds of ribbing, but that may well block out, so I’m not worried. I decided to stay on the US 7 needles for the body. The set up round was a bit of a beast, as I didn’t find the designations for the cable stitches intuitive at all and had to consistently look at the instructions, but thanks to knitCompanion it was easy to keep track of where I was in the row. When I got to the body it has you knit moss stitch, Chart A, Chart B, Chart A, moss stitch. I flipped Chart A so that it would be a mirror image the second time I worked it, making the pattern symmetric, an easy thing to do in knitCompanion.
As I was knitting the ribbing I pondered the needle size given in the pattern. It seemed to me that in order to get gauge with a US 9 you would have to be an incredibly tight knitter (I am not a loose knitter since I changed how I tension my yarn, nor am I a tight knitter). But then I noted that the designer is Japanese, and I know that the Japanese size their needles differently than we do in the US, so I found a conversion chart online. A Japanese size 9 needle is 4.8 mm, which falls right between a US 7 (4.5 mm) and a US 8 (5.0 mm).
Pattern: Saltwind by Keiko Kikuno
Yarn: Osprey by Quince & Co
Needle: US 7 (4.5 mm)
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