Out of Compliance

I've been up to my eyeballs addressing compliance issues at work. When it first began, I was all about improving the user experience. It ended with me striving for compliance. Period. Screw the user's experience. Okay. I don't really mean that. But I can see how a person can lose sight of the user in all the hoops one must jump through in order to become compliant.

Man, I'm glad there aren't any compliance rules in knitting.

'xcept there are, of course. What else do you call gauge? I often thumb my nose at gauge and I never knit swatches, but gauge always kicks me in the butt when I get it wrong. It took me four attempts to get this right because gauge kept kicking my butt:

It's the Wheat Cable Vest from the March 2008 issue of Creative Knitting. I fell for this project as soon as I flipped through the magazine. In no time, I found a suitable yarn in my stash and it was on the needles before I could say, "Clean Slate in 2008." Ooops!

I am a wee bit concerned that the pattern has received mixed reviews here at chez Knit Once. The OS noted that the girl pictured in the pattern photo appeared to have thrown it on randomly because those colors don't really go together. And The Hubby thinks the vest looks fine but doesn't get the whole shirt hanging out below the vest thing.

So far, I love it.

I'm using Cascade Pastaza in red. And I think the cable wheat pattern is an excellent choice for a first cable project. In fact, I think this vest would be an excellent first cable project since there aren't any sleeves to knit. The four-row pattern repeat is easy to memorize and it's a great way to learn and easily predict the results from knitting with the cable stitches in front or back. I've found that I've quickly learned to "read" the knitting and to predict whether the cable will "twist" to the left or to the right. This is something that's always been a mystery to me in the past.

I'm hoping to finish the vest by the end of the month. The race is on now that I'm in compliance, or so I hope.

Comments

[Lorette]

Gauge has kicked me in the butt a time or two. Maybe I need a good compliance officer around here to remind me of the "rules". Of course, I probably would ignore him.