Success! RH403 and RH404

I've done it! I've done it!

Last summer, I took RH403 and RH404 (Polish Delia and Giermak, respectively) out of print because I couldn't get them to print properly. Sometimes when it's overly hot and humid, my printer gets confused. Unfortunately during the busy season (June through September), it is often overly hot in humid in my third-floor workshop where the printers live. Instead of printing at a normal size, it would print the pattern for giants. The lines would run right off the page! And if I'm not actively watching the printer, it will just print until it gets to the end of the pattern, which in some cases takes three or four times as much of the roll of paper as required to print a normal pattern. Needless to say, I wasted a lot of paper this way.

This error happens only with patterns that encroach on the paper's maximum printable width or patterns that use a custom paper size. Typically when this happens, I power off the printer and wait for dark. Sometimes I just have to power off and on again. But when it's humid, it's never a bad idea to wait for the heat of the day to subside before I try again.

Last summer, however, it just wasn't working for these two patterns. I would power off and power on again, and it would print expanded. So I took the patterns out of the line-up, apologised to my wholesalers who'd been waiting for stock, and decided to try again in the fall.

But the lack of humidity was no help. To be honest, it wasn't that hot up here last August. There certainly were days when it would have worked if humidity had been the cause. Obviously humidity wasn't the culprit. So I took the patterns off the website and told the wholesalers that I had no idea when they would be back in print.

In an attempt to "trick" it into working, I tried printing on 42" wide paper. No good. I cut the pattern out of one file and pasted it into a new file. Nothing. Damn...

I knew what this was going to mean: I was going to have to redraft these patterns from scratch. Let me tell you that there is nothing quite so annoying as redrafting something that is already done and staring at you mockingly from your hard drive. So I just kept telling myself I'd do it later. And I've been too busy with the business expansion and the Pirate and Tudor patterns to address it.

But it's busy season again, and my wholesalers are looking for those patterns again. Bob is participating in a radio contest today and it's nice and cool, so I decided to come upstairs and give it my all.

I rebuilt the file piece by piece. I copied a piece from the old draft, test printed it, confirmed it would print at normal size, added another piece from the old draft, and so on. When I thought I was finally finished, I test printed the whole pattern on the correct paper size... and it PRINTED EXPANDED!!!

Well, at least I'd narrowed down the problem. The only difference between the previous test print and this one was paper size. So it doesn't like 120" long paper. But it's okay with 100" long paper.

I know this makes no logical sense. But I need to get these patterns printed. So this is how it's going to be until I figure out why my printer suddenly has a problem with 120" long paper.

Both the Delia and Giermak are long coats. But the pattern instructions already include information on how to lengthen them to your custom size. So I don't feel bad about shortening the draft by 10" front and back (bascially making an ankle-length pattern mid-calf length). However this is now explicitly explained in the first two pages of the instructions.

So: READ YOUR INSTRUCTIONS BEFORE YOU CUT!!!

I went through a lot of paper this morning (sorry trees!), but the Giermak and Delia patterns are now printing at normal size. Yay!

Voilà: http://www.reconstructinghistory.com/index.php?c=22&d=34&w=24&r=Y

The mockery now perpetrating itself is that my other printer (the "jerk") just stopped printing and gave me one of those annoyingly cryptic "Turn off the main power switch and restart. If you receive this message again, call service" messages. Well guess what, pain-in-my-prodigious-ass printer? YOU are being replaced on Monday morning. Mwah ha ha ha ha!

I win. =)