I recently was gifted the pattern for the Wilwarin Top, and so of course, I immediately cast on.
After two days, I had knitted up a swatch square, completed the picot gem, and worked up the first full repeat of the pattern. However, the yarn was pooling. A lot.
I remember, after finishing the picot edge, considering adding in the second skein to alternate, but being so caught up in the knitting that I just wanted to keep on going and didn’t want that pesky skein slowing me down. However, as soon as I stopped to take a look at the project as a while, I knew that the pooling would annoy me, and changing to the second skein halfway through and having a different pooling pattern would annoy me even further.
I was going to have to frog back to the picot hem.
At this point, I figured I should probably also pull out the measuring tape and check my gauge, which, naturally, was way off. Instead of having 26 stitches per 10cm, I only had 23st, which meant that my top would definitely be the wrong size. I resigned myself to frogging the entire project and starting again with smaller needles.
After I finished the picot hem, I added in the second skein and started alternating them every row (helical knitting, essentially).
Turns out, it’s fantastic now! The second skein, along with the different gauge (which is perfect, by the way) have resulted in the knitted fabric being beautifully dappled with no obvious pooling anywhere, and I know that this will be consistent for the full body of the gament!! The lesson here is, I have never regretted frogging my work if I am not completely happy with it, and I should be far less resistant the next time the situation occurs.