Ah Hah!!!

If you'll remember, last week I was bummed, because I had 2 knitting projects going and was having a problem with both of them. The 'Ah Hah' is in regards to my Cul-de-Sac Vest. I was having a stitch count problem, where things were not adding up and it was throwing me into a tizzy. To recap just a bit:

"After joining the 2 bottom flaps and finishing charts C&D, it said I should have 142 stitches. Then beg. increasing 2 stitches every 6th row, 6 times for under the armpits. After doing that increase, according to the pattern I should have 138 stitches. Which is obviously doesn't add up, so I chose to ignore that part and just knit on."

I emailed a couple Ravelry members who have knitted the Cul-de-Sac Vest. The thought that kept popping into my head was: "why am I having such a hard time figuring this out when at least 60 other Ravlery members have made or are making this vest and they don't seem to be having the same problem." I could not figure out what I was missing.

"Spinsterrowe" (a.k.a. Lisa) emailed me back on Dec 4th, and although I read her email, there was obviously an electrical short somewhere between my brain and the lightbulb that hovers over everyone's head. (You know you have one too right?). She sent me another email today, checking up on my progress, and I replied back, that no I hadn't really figured it out but that I had just decided to frog back the armhole decreases and re-do them. I told her I had even tried to count the stitches in a row below the armhole decreases to determine exactly where my mistake was, but hadn't had any sucess with that either (because I counted 138 and new that must be wrong). I admitted that I had also switched the L/R cable charts and so had ended up with an "S" on either armhole in one spot instead of the cable. So for aesthetic reasons, I was just going to frog back and my stitch count would just have to be what it was. After sending this response back to her, I decided re-read her earlier email to see if I could maybe glean some more info from it, which I thought highly doubtful. To my immense surprise, I read the following sentence:

"when you join the back pieces, there are 16 extra stitches for the cables that have been decreased out of the picture before you get to the underarm. 142-16 (cable stitches) =126, 126+12 (increases) =138."

OMG!!! I can only imagine what this woman was thinking of my intelligence level when she read my "no, still haven't figured it out" email, and here she had answered my question in her email on the 4th. I admit I'm blond, but I don't usually act it!

Everytime I re-read the pattern I was interpreting it to say "After joining the 2 bottom flaps and finishing charts C&D you should have 148 stitches" when in actuality I was joining the 2 bottom flaps in the middle of the charts and then decreasing as I finished charts C&D.

Again, OMG how dumb am I. No wonder none of the other 60+ knitters were having problems with this pattern as there wasn't a problem in the first place.

I must now admit that I have actually messed up my armhole decreases, because I have 1 decrease row left to do and I should then have 88 stitches but will have 96. So I know I missed a couple of decreases along the way and still need to frog to fix that. But I at least know that what it is that I was missing.