Elodie

Shhh! Elodie is blocking. She is laid out on the floor of my family room, on top of an old mattress pad, patiently being transformed into something soft, warm, and gorgeous. For some reason, when I have a piece laid out like that, I want to tiptoe around it and talk in hushed tones.

She's beautiful already and I know I am going to love her when I get the little bit of sewing done. I blocked the body previously and now I am blocking the collar. It should be done this afternoon. I'll post pictures of the finished shrug shortly.

The wave-stitch lace pattern was easy to do, especially with this yarn, Berroco Ultra Alpaca Light. I was constantly making mistakes, but was able to fix them without frogging back. A purl can easily be turned into a knit on the next row with the help of a crochet hook, and missed yarn overs can be picked up on the next row as long as there are only one or two. More than that and the yarn gets too tight. I used stitch markers to mark the beginning and ends of the pattern repeat so that as I purled on the wrong side, I could check to see if I had done the pattern correctly on the right side.

I made the petite size with the size 4 and 6 needles as specified, but the yarn has stretched after blocking and with working so that it is several inches longer and wider than when I started. No problem for me or for this pattern. There is room for lots of leeway.

But I am sorry to report that the pattern is riddled with errors. One MAJOR error is with the setup row. You knit a long, winding ladder of purls that eventually you drop and let run to the bottom. Fortunately, I asked myself the question, "What will stop it when it gets to the bottom, so that it doesn't continue into the ribbing?" Answer: There should be a yarn over at the end of the lace pattern and before the ribbing to stop the run. BUT their pattern is incorrect! Their line for the setup row reads:

*p2, p2tog, yo, p9, etc.

It should be:

*p2, yo, p2tog, p9, p2tog, yo, p1 rep from *, end p1.

The other errors can be easily corrected as you work if you are at all familiar with knitting lace and sweaters, but you would not realize this error until you had completely finished the lace part of the body and let the purls run to the bottom only to discover that they would continue to run into the ribbing! I would have been VERY UPSET if this had happened to me, although I probably could have gerrymandered some kind of fix.

Other errors include not telling you to switch to the larger needles when you start the wave stitch pattern when working on the body, and not telling you to sew the ribbing of the body together at the end to form cuffs. I also think there is an error with the number of inches you need to make the ribbing on the collar. The pattern calls for 2.5 inches, but the photo looks to me like the collar is the same as the body which is 3.5. In any case, the ribbing of the collar should extend to the beginning of the ribbing of the body when you sew it up. I left 2.5 inches when I picked up the stitches for the collar, but by the time I got to knitting the ribbing of the collar, the body had stretched and 3.5 inches were needed. So it worked out fine by luck. The numbers on the diagrams do not add up either, but since my piece had stretched, and I was OK with the size, I just ignored the diagrams.

There is a list of errata for the entire booklet, Nora Gaughin Vol. 1, at this Berroco website. It lists two of the errors for Elodie, but not the worst one!