The Knitting Year In Review

 

This is NOT going to be your typical yearly knitting review where I get to show off all the things I finished this year. Oh, no. This is going to be a HORROR story. 

I worked on the Big Gray Blob for most of the year. I cast it on in March. It was supposed to be a fingering weight raglan cardi for Son. He wanted a replacement for the one I made him years ago.

I am TERRIBLE at sweater construction so I took my time with this one and mastered skills in areas I was the weakest in. I was very proud of how I picked up all those stitches around the front and neck. It looked great. 

It took me a couple of tries but those double knit front bands looked awesome. I was sailing with ease to my Christmas deadline. I was on cloud nine until......

...I tried it on The Mister on November 28th and it was TOO SHORT. I don't mean hem wise. I could fix that. I mean shoulder to underarm wise. It looked silly and The Mister is a lot shorter than Son. Off to the frog pond for the whole darn thing. I was left with lots of kinky balls and in my panic I actually tried to re-knit it before Christmas with those kinky balls. About five inches and a lot of stitches in I realized that it looked TERRIBLE. You can't get a decent tension with kinky balls. I even tried to block it out with no luck so rip, rip, rip again. I had to skein up and wash all those balls and hang them to dry which took days. 

Remember all the needle drama back in early December? That was the needle I needed to get started again that was missing. I never found it but what I did discover is that knitting on straight needles wasn't so bad. They have nice sharp points which made the increases easier. 

Not Mine. From Land's End.

I started again with that nagging thought that something was still wrong. I had followed the pattern. I had used the measurements son sent me but something was still wrong. That whole V shaping was not working the way I needed it to so...........I used Son's measurements and BOUGHT a similar sweater to use for sizing. 

Laying my sweater on top of that one made me see that I still wasn't in the ballpark when it came to the length of the front shaping. The math with this particular pattern was not adding up. So I started again adding a plain row for every 8 increase rows to add length to the front. Someone on Ravelry apparently had the same issue and fixed hers that way. It pays to read the comments on new patterns. I wish I would have done that sooner. 

And......when I saw Son on Saturday the sweater I bought was way too big but the one I've re-started should be fine. But....now he wants a sweater with a collar to keep his neck warm. Back to the drawing board. 

Happy New Year!