Onde Target

After two more swatching attempts, I finally got the gauge I needed with the Phil'Onde. I ended up on 5.0 mm needles instead of 4.0 mm needles. I guess they are not kidding when they say "knit loosely". Here's the proof of my swatching victory.

White Onde Swatch

It's not as pretty as I'd like (note the far left stitch on each rib block...). When I speak of getting gauge, I was mostly concerned about getting row gauge. I've never been very good at dealing with stitch gauge in ribbing. But this swatch does work out to 4" in both dimensions with the number of stitches and rows expected.

I have to admit, I was feeling very uncertain as I kept increasing needle sizes. So I did a survey of the projects in the Phildar books that I have that use Phil'Onde.

While most get 33 rows on 3.5 mm needles, there are a couple of patterns that get 32 or 29 on the same size needles. I guess the moral of this story is that you need to swatch and be sure and not assume that the recommended needle size is going to work for you.

But who wants to knit with white yarn when there is a variagated ball of green goodness waiting for you? After I got my swatch out of the way, it didn't take me very long to cast on and get going.

Onde Way (Bad Pun Intended)

Such a happy springy green!

I also spent some time trying to track down a solution to those ugly stitches. As per usual, it is Monse Stanley to the rescue. (If you don't own this book, you really should! It's a great investment and is filled to the brim with excellent tricks and tips, not to mention good diagrams.)

Her suggestion:

On the right side row, knit into the back of the stitch (i.e. twist the stitch).
On the wrong side rown, purl the stitch, wrapping the yarn under the needle.

Of course, I didn't look this up until after I got the back of my sweater started, but it's still early in the game, and that's not going to be a high visibility area. Plus the Phil'Onde has a boucle texture that makes stitch definition appear a little fuzzy and makes less well formed stitches less obvious.

Posting Note: The class I am taking this quarter (the last one I need to complete my masters in computer science) is proving to require more effort than I initially anticipated, and I've got some (good) things heating up at work as well. While I'm going to try to post on a daily basis, please be patient with me if I'm somewhat irregular until June.