In my previous On the Go update, I left you with a bit of a knitting dilemma: what to do with the piece of my Huntrix jumper that was already on the needles? Start over according to my second idea, or try to salvage the earlier version? That knot has since been untangled — literally. The old piece was unravelled, and I started again, this time following my second plan.

But before I really got into the swing of things, I took a little technical detour into the world of short rows. That turned out to be quite the adventure on its own, but after much thinking, counting, and calculating, I eventually decided to abandon the whole short row idea for this jumper.

Experimenting with short rows

The original idea was to add a bit of extra neck shaping, so the back would sit slightly higher. I tried to figure out how to make that work together with the cable pattern on the raglan and the additional motif on the back. But I quickly had to throw in the towel. It was just too complicated: not only did I still need to learn how to do short rows in the round, I’d also have to combine them with the cascading leaves pattern and the raglan increases. A bit too much for my brain to handle all at once!

So I decided to skip the extra neck shaping altogether, but to compensate I cast on a few more stitches (88 instead of the 80 the pattern calls for).
I unravelled the piece I had already knitted. I briefly tried to rescue the neckline by picking up the stitches again, but I grew impatient after just a few centimetres. It was taking too long, I might as well just re-knit those five rounds!

So, back to the start: 88 stitches cast on once more for the neckline.

While working on the neckband, a new idea popped into my head. What if I incorporated the short rows directly into the ribbing? That could solve the issue with the different types of stitchess, and I figured it wouldn’t be visually disruptive. The garter rib would end up a bit higher at the back than the front, but that would likely be barely noticeable.

A bit of research confirmed that this is indeed something people do, so I gave it a go.
I planned a garter neckband about 2 to 2.5 cm high, with four pairs of short rows at the back to lift the neckline slightly. Afterwards, I would shift the BOR (beginning of round) marker to the back, so there wouldn’t be a visible line running through the lace pattern of the cascading leaves.

The short rows themselves actually looked quite good. By turning on a purl stitch, there was almost no visible disruption in the texture. But when I looked at the whole thing, I wasn’t entirely happy. In the end, the back of the neckband just felt too long for my liking. I briefly considered halving the number of short rows, but decided against it. I’d simply trust that the extra eight cast-on stitches would make it fit comfortably around the neck.

So yes, a good attempt, but not for this jumper. Still, no wasted effort! I learned the principle and the technique, and that definitely counts as progress in my book.

Allons-y and DOH!

The piece was unravelled once again, 88 stitches cast on anew, and finally: Progress! Without the whole short row detour, I’d already worked out the rest of the pattern, so it was just a matter of knitting. Things moved along nicely these past few weeks: the yoke grew steadily, the stitch count swelled, and I was getting excited to finally put the sleeves on hold.

After 52 rounds, with more and more stitches each time, I was on the edge of my seat.
But before moving on to place the sleeve stitches on holders, I decided to double-check my stitch count — just to be safe.

272.

Huh?

That couldn’t be right. The pattern said I should have 248. How…?

And then it hit me.
In my eagerness to finish the yoke, I had completely forgotten a key instruction: while you increase at the front, back, and sleeves in the beginning, at a certain point the sleeve increases slow down, while the front and back continue at the same pace. I’d completely missed that slowing down bit, ending up with twelve extra stitches on each sleeve.

Doh! Facepalm!

Now what?
This wasn’t something I could just fudge. I had to go back — and not just a few rounds. No, a full twenty-two of them. *cries*

At first, I thought about threading in a lifeline so I could easily rip back to the correct round. But that was before I remembered the lace and cable sections at the shoulders. I could barely see where my thread needed to go! So I abandoned the lifeline idea and started painstakingly knitting backwards.

In reverse

Did you know that in English they call that tinking? Because it’s “knitting” backwards. How clever is that? Shame there isn’t such a neat equivalent in Dutch — *eirben* doesn’t quite roll off the tongue, lol.

Anyway, I bravely tinked along, but after one and a half rounds my patience was already running thin. Still, I managed three more before giving in to my impatience and deciding to try that lifeline after all.

Thankfully, it worked fine in the plain stockinette sections. I wove the thread in four rounds below the point where I wanted to stop, giving myself a bit of a buffer to catch any dropped stitches or fix mistakes. In the lace and cable sections, though, I just winged it. Sometimes I could see where the thread went, sometimes not at all. *sweats*

Once I’d gone all the way around, I really had to psych myself up to pull the needle out and start ripping back.
So NERVE WRACKING!

Then came the painstaking process of picking up all the stitches again. Slowly, carefully. Searching for those few dropped stitches, those little loose loops… but in the end, they were all safely back on the needle.

I then continued knitting backwards, replacing the markers, and checking the fabric critically to make sure everything lined up. And — eureka! My stitch count turned out to be perfect for round 33 instead of 34, which I had aimed for. Ideal! It also meant fewer rounds to tink back, down to round 30, where my mistake had started. Three rounds to knit back felt much better than twenty-two!

Allons-y, take 2

And now I can move forward again. Back to the next 22 rounds — this time with the correct increases in the correct places.

Phew! It was a bit of a struggle not to lose motivation with this jumper, but thankfully everything went smoother than I’d feared! The mistakes are fixed, all stitches are safely back on the needle, and now it’s just plain knitting again, with an audiobook in my ears or a cosy show playing in the background. To be continued!

Cheers,
Charlotte