May 1, 2008

Japanese Efficiency - Kit-70 New Gauge

Hi Everyone!

Just to let you know, this is my very first time posting on the KAL.

I've visited the group before, but didn't have anything to contribute until now :)

I purchased my Kit-70 last year, but didn't get started on it until this week. It was actually supposed to be a Christmas present for my Aunt in London, but now it will have to be a birthday present instead (I'm kind of a slow knitter and have been sidetracked by other projects).

Once I reviewed the instructions, I found that I really loved the style and efficient 'beauty' of Japanese knitting patterns and the use of numeric 'sequences' to guide the knitter.

Since those numeric sequences were so different than what I'm used to working with, I decided to 'map out' the whole thing in Excel (I love my spreadsheets, plus Kirsten and a few other knitter's kept mentioning the irregularities in this pattern and I was scared to jump right in).

After inputting everything for the sweater's back panel, I zoomed out and noticed how wide it looked...

It was alarming!

Somehow, the shape was horizontally 'skewed', as if it were stretched lengthwise:

Since something was visibly wrong, I double checked the Habu schematic. All the measurements looked good and the illustration was drawn like it was supposed to fit a 'normal' adult human (not an orangutan with really long arms that drag on the ground).

Then, I decided to break out the calculator and dig deeper...

The instructions note that you should get a row gauge of:
18 rows = 4" (4.5 rpi - rows per inch)

On the schematic, they want you to achieve the following measurements WITH that gauge:
162 Rows = 26" (6.24 rpi)
100 Rows = 16" (6.25 rpi)
140 Rows = 22.4" (6.25 rpi)

Does anyone else see a conflict here?

It seems like the only way to get those measurements is to use a row gauge of 6.25 rpi or 25 rows per 4", making the correct gauge for this pattern 25 rows and 16 stitches per 4" square.

Here's what it looks like with the row gauge corrected:

At least now, I feel more confident casting on.

Hopefully, this is the only bug in the pattern?

2 comments:

kirsten said...

hey, kent, thanks for sharing your process with this pattern.
so helpful.
[i am seriously hoping i don't need to frog a back and half a front...)

kirsten @ assemblage.typepad.com

Luisa said...

Really helpful, I'll keep this in mind!