First things first - I’m already tired of calling this sweater “Rebecca Sweater With Embroidered Yoke”, and the acronym “RSWEY” doesn’t do much for me either. [all of the Rebecca sweaters have really long and mostly lame names… what’s up with that?]

Therefore, I hereby declare this sweater “Snowflake”! Why Snowflake? Well, the embroidery on the front kind of looks like snowflakes. Never mind the fact that they have four points instead of six. Who’s counting?!?

Now for the drama…

While Frieda was blocking last night I decided to start working on Snowflake. Now, this pattern is a German pattern (translated/written in English), and all of the measurements are in metric units. [Note: you can download the FREE pattern here.]

Metric to English conversions are not exactly rocket science (or is it?), and having taken a bizillion or so (ok, more like 6) advanced math classes in college and graduating with an engineering degree, I should be able to figure this metric stuff out, right? Not so much.

After a few hours of knitting, this is what I had… 20cm of ribbing, followed by nearly an entire repeat of the cable pattern stitch.

Here’s a close up shot of the cable pattern. Starting it was a real pain, due to the carefully placed increases, but once I got going it was really fun and easily memorized. I have to thank Grumperina for the wonderful tutorial she posted on cabling without a cable needle - this is an AWESOME technique, and makes cabling super fast and easy. Head over and check it out when you get a chance… very clever!

After I got to this point, I set aside my knitting to watch Desperate Housewives - one of the few shows that I watch sans knitting. While I was watching TV, a thought occurred to me… 20cm IS NOT EQUAL TO FOUR INCHES, it is equal to EIGHT inches. I only knit four inches of ribbing before starting the cable pattern. Oy. Bonus points for you if you took a look at the picture above and said “that’s NOT 20 cm!” I’m not sure if I wasn’t thinking straight, or if I was just eager to put an end to the ribbing and get to work on the fun stuff. Either way - I was not happy to realize my conversion error… what was I thinking? From now on, I’m just going to start measuring and thinking in metric units when I’m working on a metric pattern!

I restrained myself from frogging and adding to the ribbing last night. I figured nothing good could come of it.

Tonight, I frogged. Ouch.

Then I finished knitting the ribbing. It really is 20cm long now. Check the measuring tape for yourself. :)

I’m on serious 2×2 ribbing overload right now between Frieda’s collar and the bottom edge of Snowflake. But now I’m done with the back ribbing and can start on the fun stuff tomorrow. (cables - woohoo!)

Speaking of Frieda, I used a three needle bindoff to seam the shoulders today, and got about 3″ of ribbing done on the collar. Only 6.5″ to go. Argh. Incidentally - I’m using magic loop to knit the collar. It’s my first time using magic loop, and it is a lot easier than I expected! I’ll have to try it for socks sometime.