At one of our Monday night knitting circles, I cast on for the Isabella from Knitty. I was so excited to make something for myself while being bold enough to alter the pattern so I could knit in the round. It only took about four days for me to get about six inches done, but after several decreases I started to crinkle my nose up at the way the decreases were coming out.

My k2togs looked fine, but the SSK's were giving me a fit. They all looked so odd! I decided that it might be time to frog the entire thing and take another running jump at it. After all, if I'm knitting it for a perfectionist, it should be perfect. [ Yes I realize I sound delusional...]

As you can see from the picture below, I hadn't picked up the cast-on sitches for the picot edge either. In fact, I didn't even think of it. It was one more vote for the frog.

I asked some more veteran knitters what they thought and there were mixed reviews. Surprisingly, I wasn't that upset about the idea of ripping it out and starting over. I actually started to look forward to it. While trying to decide what to do, I laid the Isabella over a sweater I'd worn to work that day. I gasped. I guess my gauge was a tad off after all.

So before I started ripping things out, I knit over to the seams and tried several rows of decreases to see which one I'd like better. And since I was going to frog it anyway, I just knit back and forth about 20 stitches for several rows to speed things along.

First I did k2tog, k2, Ssk. Pardon the blackberry photos, I didn't have my camera handy. Nevertheless, you can see the difference a few changes make. First, I put the k2tog before the ssk to see if I liked the slants better. Next, I changed my Ssk to slip one as if to knit, slip one as if to purl, knit them together. I liked the way it came out, but I think I should have only knit 1 in between. So that's what I did the second time.

I knit on over to the other seam and did the same back and forth knitting to practice this decrease. I did the same ssk as above, slipping one knit-wise and one purl-wise. I also only knit one in between both decreases and ended with the k2tog. This seemed to create such a nice line upward with clean slants for the decreases which looks great with this feminine sweater.

Shortly after I finished working these decreases, the Isabella was no more. Luckily I had mucho timeo in the car yesterday (not to mention all the waiting) and I got a great running start again. I think I'll be back where I was when I frogged it by the next sit n' knit! I turned the picot edge and seamed it as I went. It was a pain, but it's beautiful. B-E-A-U-tiful.

Pattern: Isabella
Source: Knitty
Yarn: Knit Picks Shine Sport in Green Apple
Needles: US5 Denise Interchangeable

Learn more about decreasing things here.