Thinking Globally

In addition to surviving a heatwave (turns out beer is cold, as well as delicious!), I have been working this week on a project that I can't show you.  Suffice it to say that this particular project begins with corrugated ribbing, which I both love and hate, in equal measure.  I love it because of course, it's beautiful.  There is nothing like corrugated rib for showing off color-changing yarn.  It also has the clever effect of providing garment shaping, where none has actually been knitted.  And let's not forget those vertical stripes:  Slimming!  So Slimming!  But unfortunately, corrugated rib always brings to the party its ugly stepsisters:  SLOWNESS and PAIN.  Knitting 306 sts with two strands on a size one needle is a colossal pain in the ass.  And when some dumbass designer gets cute and specifies that the ribbing has to go on for SIX INCHES, that's just ridiculous (I'm looking at you, mirror!).  And for some reason, making ribbing always hurts my elbows.  Picking, throwing, left or right, ribbing seems to hurt me, no matter what I do (other than obstain, like smart people).

By way of distracting myself from the self-inflicted dumbassery, I did a little mental work on a design for Collier's Irish Aran.  To that end, I pulled out Sabine Dominik's gansey book for reference.  My thought was to adapt a Japanese pattern that I love, but cannot read (and whose gauge is a total mystery), so I leaned on the English version of Sabine's book, which has been translated from the original German.

And that's when it hit me:  I am an American knitter, reverse-engineering a Japanese pattern, with the help of a German book, translated to English, in order to make an Irish sweater.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong?