Sweater Progress, Collection Update

   As soon as I posted on Twitter that the sweater was going well, I knew there would be repercussions. And I was right. There I was, happily crocheting along, when I decided to measure the width of the sweater back I was working on. It is supposed to be 12 inches wide. I was pretty sure I was close. As it turns out, it was over 13 inches wide!

   I cursed a little, then thought about taking the extra width into account when I seamed the pieces together. Nope, that would make the seams way too thick. That leaves frogging. I frogged the entire 6 inches I had crocheted so far, all the way back to the starting chain. Then I had trouble counting that, so I ended up pulling that out too.

   I re-did the starting chain, making it four chains shorter, to account for that extra inch. I did the first row, and measured it. Now the fracking thing was only 10 inches!!  Again, I frogged, and went back to the original stitch count. Again, I did the first row, and measured. Now it was 11 inches! The same number of stitches was a whole inch shorter. I hoped it would stretch out a little as I progressed.

   Two rows later, I measured again. Now it was almost exactly 12 inches. How does that make any kind of sense? The first time, I measured the starting chain, and it was 12 inches. I didn't take into account the improbable fact that when you crochet into the starting chain it seems to stretch it a bit. Either way, it seems to be OK now.

   I took a couple of photos before I measured the first time. Here is how the sweater back looked then:

   And I took a close up of the stitch pattern, it's really textural and different.

   It's one sc, then one dc, repeated across the row, and the next row, you sc in the dc's and dc in the sc's.  It makes for a very interesting fabric with no right side or wrong side. I can't wait to get more pieces done!

   As I told you in the Collections post, I went into the den and looked around. It turns out I had forgotten a collection. It's not my fault, it's not really my collection. When my mom sold her house and moved into an apartment, she tried to downsize her belongings. I, therefore, inheirited her antique salt dish collection. In the old days, everyone at the dinner table had their own little dish of salt. People now collect these little dishes. They come in all colors, and they are pretty. One of these days, I will photograph them individually, so I can post them and you can see them.

   And for those of you wondering, I have a set of wooden tray tables that my mom painted on. I am currently using the checkerboard one for my laptop, and I use it for the background when I photograph some of my work. I think I will switch out the tray table, the other ones are really lovely.

   That's all for now. Wish me luck, and let's all hope I don't piss off the Yarn Goddess again by bragging. I really should know better.