Oy, Vay!

Well. I've designed a new sweater called Every Good Boy Does Fine. If you've ever studied music, you'll be familiar with that phrase as we learned the names of the lines in a music staff that way. The alternative version was Every Good Boy Deserves Favor. And we learned the spaces as FACE. The reason behind a music-themed sweater is that I've been engaged to sing with the Israeli Opera chorus. I've been singing opera since I was 14, and singing it professionally since I was 19. So I'm thrilled. To be singing, that is.  With the pattern, not so much. The sweater is black and white with a central 16 stitch vertical pattern down the front of a piano keyboard. In the photo, you'll notice that I was using metal washers as spacers to try and control the tension in the colorwork section. But you'll also notice that the keyboard is somewhat corrugated in texture and I'm pretty sure that I can't block that out. So then I switched to using binder clips on the floats to control tension as in the second pic. But then the floats are too long. And I never did find a good way of changing colors at the beginning and ending of the piano that didn't leave gaping holes. And then, after about 10" of knitting and not being satisfied, I started experimenting. First I tried knitting the stitch before and after the piano with both colors of yarn. Hated it but it solved the problem of the holes. But I suddenly remembered a video I'd seen recently where someone advocated for catching the float on every stitch. And by George, it works! First of all, it's very easy to control the tension because it's essentially one long float in a straight line so if it's too tight when you're done with those 16 stitches, it's easy to adjust. And secondly, it's very neat on the wrong side. So now, it's time to ribbit, ribbit, ribbit. Yes, I'm frogging the whole torso. The sample is going to be my sweater but I just can't abide it as it is.