Bohus Lament

Soooo after I attached the second sleeve, I started to have this vague feeling in the pit of my belly: a mixture of doubt and dread.  Something wasn't quite right with the Bohus.  Not sure the thing will fit; it seemed just a wee bit too short and a wee bit too wide.  Bottom-ups are hard to try on (ask me how I know).  I was so tempted to just rip, rip, rip  . . . 


While reading about the adventures of other knitters, how many times has a crafter ignored her gut feelings and tarried on, only to be sorry in the end.  Lesson learned: never be afraid to rip.  Its just yarn.  Yet despite trusting my gut, I still couldn't summon up the courage to rip out all that work.  Instead I put it aside, and then perused Ravelry.  My search for the Holy Grail  turned up nothing.

The Swatch

Discouraged, I looked through my bag of yarn.  The navy looked yummy next to the teal, grass and grape . . . then I heard a whirring and whizzing in my brain.  My heart jumped a little.  What if I designed my own top-down yoked cardi that contained many of the stylish elements of the Bountiful Bohus?  Grabbing some needles and a fresh ball of Softee Chunky, I started swatching.  When I was happy with the fabric, I meandered over to a top-down calculator.  After punching in my gauge, out came a raglan pattern.  Then I found a couple of bottom-up patterns in bulky weight with yoked tops.  Now I had the tools to reverse-engineer a yoked sweater using the stitch counts from the top-down calculator.  Sound complicated? Maybe, but I just know in my gut its gonna work.