A little frogging and frustration

Thank you so much for all of your wonderful comments about Sahara. I am thrilled with it and was even more thrilled to get such awesome feedback from all of you!

I have been knitting a lot lately . . . and frogging, too. One of my WIP was an attempted re-creation of Karabella's cabled, ribbed yoke cardigan. Well, I have learned that when trying to do these knock-off designs, it is important to first swatch the stitch pattern you think is used in the original design. I started off knitting this from the top down using a k1, p1 rib and increasing 4 times up to a k1, p5 rib. I know that this wasn't exactly the way it was done in the real version, but I thought it would be close enough. I got to the underarm, divided for the sleeves and did a few rows of the cable pattern. And I realized that I really, really, really did not like it.

I didn't like the way the ribbing looked, and the transition to the cable (which you really can't see here) looked weird. So, I frogged.

Then I decided this yarn might be a good candidate for the knock-off of Bea, from Kim Hargreaves, that I'd been thinking about. Long story short, after about 5 or 6 attempts to try and mimic the stitch pattern in Bea, I couldn't figure it out. It looks like some kind of crossover, and I think I was close, but everything I did looked weird.

So I've settled for a simple stockinette with a decorative raglan increase. I think this will look very nice with the pretty buttons I've got.

I am not abandoning the attempted knock-offs, because they are fun to figure out and ultimately, I think I am learning something. All that frogging, re-knitting, frogging, re-knitting does get a little frustrating, but I think in the end I will have some successes under my belt.