Learning From Mistakes with Mods Gone Wrong

Modifications are cool because you can learn from a new pattern while trying to implement changes of your own - kind of like designing with training wheels. That said, it doesn't always work out the way you want it to...

Striping on the collar and cuffs of my Kouki cardi mod, for example.

before and after

I knew getting clean looking stripe was going to be difficult because of the way a purl stitch looks, but I couldn't for the life of my think of how to avoid it. I decided to just knit as the original (non-striping) pattern was written, hoping that inspiration would strike me later.

The pattern called for a k2p2 ribbing on the cuffs and bottom edging. As you see above, the left cuff (k2p2) looks pretty sloppy. The collar however called for a portion of k2p1 ribbing... d'oh! Of COURSE that makes the stripes look so much better! I don't know why I didn't think of hiding the purl stitches this way... So I ripped out the cuffs and redid them with a k2p1 rib - as shown on the right. MUCH nicer.

Let's see that again.

Ripping out the cuffs was really rough, but luckily I was able to pick out the black from the cream yarn easily enough and knit out from there. I actually wasn't able to rip out and fix the bottom edging because I had already sewn the fleece on, and was tired of ripping out stitches. (More mistakes I learned from...tbc later) Part of learning the hard way, I guess!