Basalt Tank Derailed

I started the Basalt tank yesterday using stash yarns in Amish colors. I encountered several difficulties. These are the two hexagons I had intended to use for my center front and back.

I made the hexagons in the round. For the first hexagon, I used green yarn and the corrections posted by cmeknit but the hexagon puckered in the middle in an unattractive way. So I frogged it back to row 24 and made both garter stitch/eyelet sections the exact same way. I was happy with the result until I got to the inside stockinette section. The decreases were too frequent and caused puckering in the center.

I had previously made two other sweaters with equilateral triangles, but the decreases came at the rate of 6 stitches over 8 rows. Click here for a discussion about the correct decrease ratio for equilateral triangles. Click here for another discussion about the correct decrease ratio for right triangles.

Since I was knitting in the round, I placed paired decreases every 3rd row (6 decreases every 9 rows). The resultant green hexagon has a slight volcano which is barely noticeable. The hexagons in the photograph have not been blocked (just patted down a little bit for their photo op).

So, if I used 2 colors of the same yarn, Cascade Key Largo, then why do I have a small amount of the green yarn left over after completing the hexagon but ran out of the red yarn with 7 stitches remaining on each side?! If you read the label, they both are supposed to be 110 yards.

So I am at a crossroads. What should I do?

1. Join a ball of dark berry colored yarn and pretend I planned a contrast section all along.


2. Bind off and leave a peekaboo section in my midsection.


3. Frog the whole thing and use it as a side 5/6 hexagon. (But this would put the red right next to the green and make a summer sweater look like Christmas.)


4. Frog back to just after the second eyelet row and continue in stockinette until I run out of yarn. Stockinette would take less yarn than garter stitch and I might have enough yarn to knit the center completely in stockinette (or leave a smaller peekaboo section).


5. Some other solution from the wisdom of the internet.
   

Addendum for knitting these hexagons in the round

The pattern was probably written for knitting back and forth to avoid the jog at the end of the rounds. See the mismatch at the change of rounds when switching from garter to stockinette?




Here is what happens when I remembered to knit the first stitch of the round together with the stitch immediately underneath it. The garter purl ridge is lifted up just enough to meet the ridge at the end of the prior row. No jog!




Pay no attention to the pink yarn. I was trying to avoid lumpy seams by using this nifty trick in Lucy Neatby's latest newsletter for crocheting a provisional cast on.