When knitting gives you lemons, you (try) to make lemonade. This is Debbie Bliss‘s Baby Bolero, knit in her baby cashmerino. It is the cover item on her Baby Cashmerino 2 booklet. Many a Raveler has been tempted to knit this, possibly not noticing that knitting a stockinette shrug with increases and decreases at the edge and then being asked to knit 2 long borders of eight stitches (with increases up toward the neck) “until border, when slightly stretched, fits from center of lower back edge, along lower edge of front, round front edge to begininning of neck shaping, sewing in place as you work” is not going to be a piece ‘o cake. Just about everyone who knits this ends up with a sloppy mess where the band joins the shrug, especially along the bottom curves and back where there is no bordering set of decreases to butt the band up to.

Forewarned, I decided to knit this shrug anyway. I even decided to use baby cashmerino, a yarn a friend of mine says will soon have “more pills than a pharmacy.” My idea was to pick up stitches all around the edge of the bolero and then knit the border on. I still think it should have been a good idea. It did avoid the sewing. It did avoid what some find to be the border’s unfortunate tendency to curl forward or, for some, curl backward. I would have thought it would avoid the dreaded untidy seam. What I didn’t expect was that picking up stitches in this fabric would create very unpleasant holes, especially along the curves.  Really, when I was done it looked like a road filled with potholes needing cold-patching.

I first tried to salvage this by using my rudimentary crochet skills. I tried to apply a chain of sort-of-crochet along the edge to cover up the holes. It looked, well, really bad. I think a better crocheter could have figured out a proper stitch to work along the edges. Someone with good embroidery skills (not me) could have also come up with a nice save. I ended up crocheting a chain and threading it in and out of the assortment of holes, adding a few new ones along the way to keep the spacing fairly even. I feel like I salvaged the garment. Probably just until the first wash, though. Not a very satisfactory project. Next time I will trust the collective wisdom of Ravelers.