We are having college Spring Breaks around here – so lots of family time!

But a quick cautionary tale.

I am designing a top-down sweater, The Turtle Sweater — named because it is kind of the color of turtles (both the reptilian and confectionary species) and because it features Track of the Turtle stitch, a cable-ish/lace panel.   Since I am knitting it in the round, I had to adjust the stitch pattern instructions from Right Side/ Wrong Side (back and forth flat) knitting to Right Side (in a circle) knitting.  And I converted the line-by-line directions to a chart.  I did so with the accompanying Waved Ribbon pattern, too (another panel).  And there are increases for the raglan and a varying number of background stockinette – all very complex and requiring both a lot of markers and a lot of concentration.

I made it through the 10 rows of the patterns and was just beginning the 11^th row, when I took a good hard look at my panels.  While the Waved Ribbon looked right, the Track of the Turtle looked wrong.  Dead wrong.  Absolutely, perfectly wrong.  It did not look like a turtle track (although it looked rather as if a turtle might have knit it!).  Nothing lined up – a stockinette column of random yarn-over holes and knit-2-togethers and ssks.

Rats. 

After some rather bitter study, I came to the conclusion that I had made the chart correctly for the odd-numbered rows, but backwards for the even-numbered rows.  And I had to admit that the chart itself looked nothing like the knitting was supposed to look (which would have been a dead give-away if I had bothered to look at it closely before I started!). 

I managed to fix the chart.  But there was no surgical procedure I could do to fix the panels.  Even though 80% of the sweater was perfect, the turtle panels were completely botched – so I had to rip the thing back to the ribbing.  (it is probably best not to calculate the number of knitting hours lost…)

Today’s lesson, my dears:

1)      When working from a chart (especially one you have written out or altered) look at if closely before you start knitting to see if it looks like the knitted piece is supposed to look

2)      If you are going to knit in the round, swatch in the round — I had swatched the panel flat to figure gauge, etc., but had just jumped into the sweater assuming I had the stitch pattern charted right without testing it out as in-the-round knitting

So, I am a wiser and humbler knitter today.  And I have a textbook in-the-round Track of the Turtle swatch to prove it!