kelp! vs Garter Stitch, in two rounds.

Round 1: In the round.

kelp!: La de da, I will knit garter stitch in the round until my eyes glaze over. An eyelet row or two will be thrown in there for excitement.
Garter Stitch (GS): Go ahead and try.
…
kelp!: Hmm, there’s this ugly seam here where the rounds begin. I was not anticipating that. Ick.
GS: Fool!

Results - GS: 1, kelp!: 0

Round 2: Knit flat.

kelp!: I have learned my lesson from Round 1, but not enough of a lesson to do a test swatch first. I will switch to knitting flat, back and forth 4-ever, and that will cure the ugliness.
GS: Bring it.
…
kelp!: Oh, wow, that looks worse than knitting it in the round. And now I have this big ugly seam, too.
GS: Ha!

Results - GS: 2, kelp!: 0

I’ve never really knit garter stitch on anything until I made the Prairie Blanket. It seems that garter stitch and I just don’t get along.

Oh yeah, the Basalt Tank is done!

Pattern: Basalt Tank, from Knitting Nature
Yarn: Jo Sharp Soho Summer, color Currant. $28/bag at Webs.
Notes: My gauge (especially row gauge) was off from the pattern, so I knit a larger pattern size.

Modifications:

1. I knit half-hexagons on the sides. I think this is a lot more wearable.

2. I doubled-up the garter edging at the top of the sweater, because otherwise it would have been a tad indecent. I also mirrored the garter edging on the bottom for additional length. I probably could have gone with half the garter edging at the bottom, but that would look weird with the top doubled.

3. Waist shaping. Totally and absolutely recommended if you have a waist. Very, very, very easy to do. You basically just have to cast-on less stitches on the side hexagon chunks. I ended up doing 5 inches of waist shaping, so the side hexagon pieces were smaller by 2.5 inches (which means I cast on 14 less stitches for each of them). Then I figured out how to evenly space the decreases so that this hex chunk would have a smooth rate of decrease (I basically did this by writing out which rows the decreases are normally at, then crossing out 14/2=7 of them). Very easy, and worked wonderfully.

I definitely thought that this sweater would be too large. When I first tried it on, the center of the front and back hexagons stuck out in a truly unflattering way. A trip through the dryer shrunk the whole sweater a bit, and it fits pretty well now.

I feel that I was a bit fast-and-loose with the construction of this sweater - I don’t think that I picked up the stitches quite evenly, and the garter seams are already bothering me. However, the thing fits, so I just may wear it out of the house. Yay!