Ginger Snapped

Today, I finished the back part of the British Checks Sweater, completing the first ginger section. So I thought I'd take some snaps. The first picture shows the outside, and the second picture shows the inside.

In the pattern, the stranded section continues on a few inches into the armhole part of the sweater. This stranded section is knit flat rather than in the round. Knitting stranded flat is like learning to knit all over again. I had finally gotten used to knitting continental on the left with the light color and throwing with my right with the light color -- now I have to do this with purling? Throwing purls (I like the way that sounds!) was painful and bad. My gauge changed. And, horror of horrors, it appears that the yarn dominance changed.

I may have mentioned this before, but when knitting with two strands of yarn, the strand that is carried lower along the back of the work will stand out more on the front. I'm no sure why, but I think it has something to do with the lower-strand taking more yarn and thus appearing larger than it's upper-strand neighbors.

Throughout the section knit in the round, I kept the lighter color in my left hand, which ran below the darker color carried in my right hand. The lighter color had dominance. I continued to do this while knitting flat, but the dominance seems to have shifted. For the last two inches or so of the stranded pattern, the darker color stands out more. You kind of have to look for it, but it's noticeable -- kind of like working with a different dye lot. Let's just say Jeff can see it.

Do you think switching hands with the color would fix this? I just don't know and haven't been able to find out anything about this. In any case I won't be doing this, because I'm not going to reknit the back. In fact, I'm going to try and make sure I do the dominance shift on the front side, too. I'm worried that when I try to, I won't be able to. We'll see.

And now a little something bizarre that sock knitters will appreciate. This afternoon when I took off a cabled sock that I made several years ago, I saw this hilarious pattern that had been imprinted on the top of my foot. If you click on the picture and go to my Flickr site, you can see notes that point out the different pattern areas.

I'm not sure why I felt compelled to share this. I hope you don't find it too disturbing.