(Click the photo for a larger picture.)Do you want the good news, or the bad news, first?
I always like to start with good news. I finished the second front piece of the baby cardigan I'm making!
The bad news is that the two pieces are different sizes. The piece on the left is longer, both in the body and in the shoulder. In fact, I had to force the shoulder to end up with the 14 remaining stitches it has now, when it was supposed to just end up that way. The bottom white border is looser on the left side -- see how it ripples up while the right piece's border lays nice and flat? Speaking of the right piece, it is wider in the body and shorter in the shoulder.
I don't know where I went wrong. Did I pull the yarn tighter in one piece than the other? Did I lose count of rows and repeats and decreases? I suspect the former in the case of the rippling white border. I suspect the latter for the problem at the shoulder.
I showed it to Scott last night. He is a Non-Knitter. I should have known better than to ask him. He said, "In something that small, it shouldn't matter if they're slightly off."
Au contraire. The smaller the item, the more significant slight variations become. (I love you, honey!)
So what to do? I can knit a few more rows on the right side to make the shoulders the same, but that doesn't change the fact that each side is slightly different in the body. If I knit the one shoulder long enough to make the total piece length match the left side, I end up with mis-matched body length AND shoulder length. That's definitely not the answer. If I want to fix it right, I must rip out about 4 inches of the right piece's shoulder. Ripping cables is no small thing. Cables take a long time to do. I enjoy them, but they are a slow-knit. If I decide to do that, then I must add a few rows to the body so both bodies are the same length. Then I have to figure out how to reknit the shoulder to match the error I made in the left side's shoulder. I must end up with identically-sized pieces, or the back won't sew on correctly. I haven't even begun to think about how to fit sleeves into incorrectly-sized openings.
My brain hurts.
OK -- time to call in the big guns. What do you think? Is the difference small enough to correct without ripping? Do I need to bite the bullet and fix it right?
Wait. I just finished reading "Yarn Harlot: The Secret Life of a Knitter". I know what to do now.
I'm going to work on my Jaywalker sock.
