Well, teens are known for being fickle and changing their minds. My just-barely-teen is typical. She’s decided she didn’t like the patterns I’d been swatching, and picked out another from my stitch dictionary library. It’s “Serpentine Rib” from Barbara Walker’s FourthTreasury of Knitting Patterns, p. 216. The kid hasgood instincts, though. I have to agree with her. The stuff I’d been playing with looked way too clunky in the scale yarn I was using. We’re both happy now, and I’m off an running.

One very minor glitch – I have to say that I’ve caught the sainted Barbara in a rare mistake. Her graph presents even numbered rows (right side rows) of the pattern. The direction for the set-up and subsequent wrong side odd-numbered rows is given in prose.It’s given as “*P2tog, YO, P8: rep from *, end last repeat p2.It’s off by one stitch (not a big mistake), and it’s pretty obvious if you’ve ever worked faggotting in lace knitting. If you start thewrong side row at that point Walker does, you won’t produce theneat wavy lines of openwork as shown in her illustration.

Here’s my own graph of the corrected pattern, showing both odd and even numbered rows. If you try this one, be sure to remember that it does start on an odd numbered, wrong side row:

In the mean time, I’ve cast on for the poncho and have knit about 2 inches, the first of which is in seed stitch so that the edge doesn’t curl too badly. I don’t like the width though. I may end up ripping back and working one fewer repeats, narrowing the body somewhat. Otherwise I have the sneaking suspicion that I’ll run out of yarn. Not a good sign if I’m unsure this early in the project…