Martin Storey's Decken

I made this sweater following a shop bought pattern called Decken by Martin Storey (which to be fair I found in a knitting magazine called The Knitter issue 13)

it looked like it should be easy to convert so I thought quick and easy doll knit, I had been making human mittens in (un)fair isle and wanted an easy thing to do.

and Vedra can never have enough knitwear.

i have the pattern in front of me, it asked for 15mm needles and 2 strands of chunky wool tweeded.
So I put my math hat on and said 2 strands of dk and 5mm knit a bit tightly, afterall I was making it in 1/3 scale which usually means 1/3 the size.

I knit about two inches and it was easily the length of my forearm. Hmmm, I thought, perhaps this is a bit big. Now I knit very tightly so I dreaded to think what this would be like in human size.

I shrank the needles down to 4.5mm and knit a bit following the pattern.
Still huge

4mm and 2 different matching colours of DK which was a nightmare.
And still too big

I went in bad temper to a pair of "good old 3.25mm" and one strand of DK

that's when i discovered the pattern for the lace was wrong. I recognised the pattern because it's the same one I used for the "Grail Shrug" which is very easy and works over a four row repeat. I checked the pattern several times it only had two. So I amended the pattern, went back to the hem and started AGAIN.

To be fair to this pattern it knit up very quickly so it was hardly any time at all before I reached the first cable twist. It went in a dream. I began to get suspicious. Cables never go in right at first, they lie in wait to fall off your cable needles when you're not paying attention at the really good bit of the film you're watching at the same time.

The pattern was wrong again. This time instead of having shortened the lace repeat it had substituted C6B with C6F which looks like a very simple and pedantic thing to get your panties in a wad over but meant instead of cabling to the back so the twist went BEHIND the fabric it came to the FRONT. This meant instead of a knot I had diagonal stripes.

There were names called, I ended up frogging it AGAIN.

After that it took next to no time. Once the kinks in the pattern were worked out it went together like a dream. I know, however, that if the pattern had been right it would have been my knitting that fell apart. No item goes together the first time. However to be fair to Mr Storey the shaping worked fine. It was just the detailing that didn't.