In the hood

I’d like to claim that my time with Rogue has all been a joy, a lark, a summer fling, but I’m afraid there is a darker side. See this?
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And this?
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And, from the other side, this?
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Hard won, hard won. What I never mentioned before when I was proudly showing you all those photos of the emergent hood (and brazenly fishing for compliments) was that when you finish with the two sides of the hood, you must graft them together at the top. Since this is a cable pattern, that means grafting in both stockinette and purl and alternating between the two over stitch combinations of two, three, four, and five.

I’ve grafted before, I thought. No problem. What I failed to appreciate was that I had never before grafted a combination of both knit and purl stitches with aran weight wool in 98 degree heat and 85 percent humidity.

So what?, I thought. I’ve got the chops. And with a little help from Montse Stanley, of Knitter’s Handbook fame, I can do this thing. Now you must understand that I love Montse Stanley. I love her not only for giving me instructions for eleventeen million cast-ons and cast-offs, but for help with beading and seams and…the list goes on. But there is this side to Montse, a Calvinist side, an uncompromising side, a side that has no truck with the kind of person who would call knitting “just” a craft or who might (great seething intake of breath here) suggest a quick, half-*ssed fix for a mistake.

Here’s Montse on errors (emphasis, by the way, as in the original):
“DON’T LIE TO YOURSELF. You will know the mistake is there and you may even feel compelled to point it out to others. It is better to face the truth and correct the mistake, no matter how painful.”

On a lapse in tension:
“Stitches that are uneven are NOT a charming sign of a handmade item. THEY ARE A SIGN OF POOR CRAFTSMANSHIP.”

Every time I try to rationalize some cockamamie solution (one that does not involve frogging, you see) to some awful knitting mistake I’ve made, I can hear her words ringing in my head: “…poor craftsmanship, poor craftsmanship, POOR CRAFTSMANSHIP…”

Okay, Montse, okay! I’ll do it right. Just leave me in peace. Just…get out of my head!

Montse was pretty much her old reliable self on the question of grafting—how it must be invisible, how you must not pull it too tight or leave it too loose—but after half an hour of struggling to understand her grafting instructions, I was not my old reliable self. I was sweating, I was angry, my yarn was knotting up, I was splitting stitches with my tapestry needle, and the graft was looking like a “sign of poor craftsmanship.” Actually, it looked worse than that. It looked like the work of malicious wild tree elves on crack.

I may have said something along the lines of, “The devil take Montse Stanley and the friggin’ high horse she rode in on! Oh, and you know what, Montse? I would never feel compelled to ‘point out a mistake to others.’ You know why? Because I’m not crazy. I’m not an obsessive compulsive like you. I’m not…” But then I realized with a thud that I am both obsessive compulsive and slightly crazy.

Just like Montse! My heroine!

Anyway, I let it sit overnight while I tried to decide if I ever wanted to knit again, let alone do this graft. The next day, I tried again with another set of instructions (sorry for the betrayal, Montse, but it just wasn’t working out between us…) and things went much better. I used the instructions for Kitchener stitch in Simple Socks by Priscilla Gibson-Roberts, which for whatever reason was much more intuitively obvious to me. For the purl grafting, well, I just kind of had to feel the magic.

After all that,
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“Is my head still here or has it exploded?”

Rogue, the Vest Years:
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Now the only thing that stands between me and an FO are those sleeves. More on that Friday…

6 Responses to “In the hood”

  1. Diane Says:

    That Rogue is just stunning.

    I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen the work of those “malicious wild tree elves on crack”. They have a lot to answer for!

  2. Ellen Says:

    Yeah, those malicious elves get around. They’ve been at my house before and I seriously doubt that I’ve seen the last of them…

  3. Shelda Says:

    That graft is gorgeous, Ellen! And I know just what you mean about Montse. She can be friend and/or foe, and often both at the same time. I haven’t commented on your half of the blog yet (I know Sarah from Ample-Knitters… she gave me the most wonderful sweater a few years back!)

    I have to say I’m enjoying both of your posts. The sister blog is a neat idea.

  4. lorinda Says:

    Kickin’ tats, baby. Eff the sleeves and keep it a vest.

    Just kidding. It looks great. The irony of all the pain for a hood is that, if you are anything like I, you will NEVER wear that hood again.

    You are the Rogue goddess, and of course the elves are jealous and wish your defeat, but you and your trusty tapestry needle have prevailed.

    I have to buy the Montse book. I need the reality check of poor craftsmanship instead of the self-delusion of “no one will notice” when all the while I’m pointing out the design flaws. Problem is, if I frog every mistake, there will never be another FO.

  5. Ellen Says:

    Yes, I have to say, in general, Montse is good for me.

    Because otherwise, I have a tendency to regard every mistake I make as an “interpretation” of the pattern. I have been known to simply repeat a mistake (say, a miscrossed cable made early on in a garment) multiple times in order to make it “part of the pattern.”

    Montse is rolling in her grave, bless her heart.

  6. Knit Sisters » Blog Archive » A spate of finishing, or “The Plan” Says:

    […] Minnie completion is my immediate goal. Then I’m going to tackle my version of Bristow, which has a back and two fronts, but has never been seamed or sleeved, and return at long last to Rogue, another sweater for which I am still feeling the love, but which is another material reminder that love is not all you need. […]