Night of the Living Granny Panties

The completed Mon Petit Chou hipster front panel is 77 rows high, including the bind-off rows, which begin at row 67. I threw in the towel after row 49. 7sts from the end of the row, I realized I needed 7 sts and had 5 sts left. I counted. I recounted. Nope. I knitted the row correctly. It's entirely possible that I screwed up something another row back, but my previous rows came out okay. So... all is not well in the state of row 49.

Then came the defining moment:
I held the piece up to my body. Even with abnormally low crotch placement, row 49 hits about an inch (maybe and inch and a half) below my navel. For comparison's sake, the top of my ideal underwear sits 4.5" below my navel. All work on MPC has been suspended until I can figure out whose definition of "hipster" meant "can alternatively be pulled up over the breasts and worn as one-piece bathing suit."

the pattern shows (l) but was apparently written for (r)

And before you ask-- yes, I swatched. I have two more balls of Fixation, so I think I might swatch up another piece just to make sure I didn't count my swatch stitches during one of my Jim Morrison-style blackouts. That could have happened.

They frog granny panties, don't they?

Mon Petit Chou (revised 5 mar 2007)

The following includes a tutorial which most people probably don't need but maybe someone will find useful. To skip the tutorial, you can click here, because I just learned how to do a very simple HTML taggy thing!

cast on for Mon Petit Chou the other day, thanks to Eunny's tutorial on invisible cast-on. The link from the knitty pattern was not helpful; the explanation in my Reader's Digest Knitter's Handbook was confusing at best.

na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na CAST-ON!

The wooden needle was my working needle (I was knitting with US6 Brittany needles)

The metal top needle has stitches picked up from the provisional cast-on edge.

The right metal needle holds the stiches made from two-to-one knitting.

Notes:
1. the two-needle foldover thing is weird. Here are some close-up pics--with super-fantastic neon highlighting.¹ Basically you pick up the stitches from your provisional cast-on with your second needle (the top metal needle at right), then you fold them and knit top and bottom together.

2.




3. 4.


5.

this two-to-one knitting creates a double-thick edging at the bottom. Ingenious!

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And here's what I have so far. I'm a little concerned because I'm almost halfway through the front panel and I'm a bit worried about just how tall these cute little knickers are going to be. They can be lace-up all they want and as holey as Baby Swiss -- but if they get too tall, they're basically see-through lace-up granny panties. Slightly sexier, non-shaping Bridget Jones-style underwear.

There's nothing inherently wrong with granny panties². They can be rather comfortable, and I know women my age who wear them. The problem is that they are their own species of undergarment and ought not be included in any description of sexy little knits.

It's all scrunched up right now, so you can't see the lace bit. The lacework will show when it's stretched out. For scale, the piece above is ~10"/25cm at its widest. So, um, it had better stretch. A lot.

The situation calls for genuinely tiny knickers.

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^1. I am the Photoshop Master; bow to my awesome MS Paint-like skills.
^2.That, and I have a strong dislike for the word "panties." *shudder*