Georgie Girl

I may have lost my mind. Georgie is an adult size sweater and is knitted in lace/sport weight yarn with teeny tiny needles (#2, #3). I chose this project because I felt I was cranking out the sweaters too quickly and I wanted to slow it down. Plus as it gets warmer, I wasn't looking forward to a heavy worsted weight sweater.

I am well on my way working up the back.

In the beginning I began to wonder if I should have moved on. It seemed like a train wreck approaching. It was an auspicious start. After casting on for gauge - I found the correct needles and put it away for the night. Then next day I put the finishing touches on a different sweater. It dawned on me that I hadn't seen my yarn from the night before. I had my daughter look under the couch that I was sitting on because I am lazy. It wasn't there. I looked through my knitting corner and the bags several times. Then an awful feeling came over me. I told my daughter to check the dining room floor. Yup. Her stupid cat had dragged it and disembowel the skein all over the floor. Spent the rest of the day untangling it and winding it up. I put it to the side and will only use it if I need it in the end.

A few days into knitting it I frogged it and am started over. Misread the pattern and casted on for the wrong size. Didn’t see it till after the ribbing was done. Thought maybe I could make it up with the front. But in the end I thought it was better to frog now and NOT when I was done with the back. Usually I remain in denial for much longer, but with these tiny needles it would be a whole heck of a lot of time wasted if I had put it off. Better to get started on the right foot.

Tomorrow I and several members of the guild are heading up north for a knitting retreat. Have my projects all figured out for the weekend. Probably will figure out what clothes I am taking about 20 minutes before I get in the car... I will have packed an over abundance of yarn and projects and not enough underwear.

Mystery Revealed

Mystery Sweater is now completed. It only needs to be washed and mailed off to Warm Woolies. I enjoyed not knowing how it was going to look. It wasn't complicated, but had enough interest to keep me going. I think this would be a nice sweater for a boy. I would knit it again, but next time in worsted. The bulky weight for this purpose was good. My main goal was to have this sweater be nice and warm for those who are in need.

It was also enjoyable that it was daylight when I finished. Nice to take photos of the finished the object outside and in the s.u.n. Don't tell Mother Nature that it is mid-March.

Repeat Cardi, Repeat Lesson

See this lovely sweater? All done. Pretty.

Lesson? Oh, take your pick. I have a few going with my knitting at this time.

First one is this lovely sweater. It started as knitting this pattern again from a lesson learned from the first time I knitted this sweater 5 years ago. This was my first top-down sweater. I knitted it with acrylic yarn. First it was knitted at a much larger size, but I lost weight after it was done. Being a lovely sweater, I eventually wanted to wear it more often, so I learned how to take apart pieces, and shorten, reknit. I liked it and it was a good throw on sweater. Then as time went on, it must have lived in the dryer just too long and it did what acrylics will often do. It became limp and giant piece of static. It began to stay in my closet longer and longer. I still couldn't part with it. Then one day I decided to make this sweater again. This time I used superwash wool. I checked gauge, lesson learned well since the first time I knitted this. A little over a month with other projects on the needles it was done.

Now the hardest part for me is the final stages. You know... wash, block... buttons... weaving in ends. I decided it was a superwash - delicate in the washing machine. While I am at it, I have a few other sweaters that I could add. Seemed like a good thing. Well one sweater, although it is a superwash - had only been hand washed. Guess what? Yarn the color of a clay pot really shouldn't be washed with a purplish yarn. I had little red lint all over the sweater. After it dried I tried taking duct tape and a brush to the sweater to remove the lint. Ha! No such luck. One more attempt. Rewash it with blue towels and thow in the dryer in it's lowest setting hoping the lint screen with catch it. Results? Red lint embedded in with blue fibers, and the sweater is slightly smaller. Fortunately I did make the sleeves extra long. So it is nice and fuzzy and has a bit of a red haze to it. Many lessons in this sweater. Main one which will be hard on follow through is not to rush the final stages AND not to mix red yarn of anything with other color yarn. (Which I should have remembered from a previous knit back in December when I knitted black glittens and washed with red sweaters. Three months later and I did it again. duh! )

Next Lesson? This is the Mystery Sweater that I am knitting for charity. See how far I am? Very deceiving. I am really not that far. Body is done.

I am such a dufus. You know when you are knitting and you know that you aren't doing it right, but yet you keep knitting thinking it will work out in the end? I knew the sleeves were too narrow. I knew it, I knew it - and yet I kept knitting. Figuring I would knit the second one correctly to see if I was right that I had been wrong. Then I planned on frogging the first sleeve and duplicate the second one. What the ...? Second sleeve was ripped back twice to get it right. I was reducing too fast and couldn't quite figure out what the pattern meant. My fault, not the pattern.

"in the same manner as in rnd 2 every 6 rnds 4(10) times"

see that doesn't mean every 2nd round and 6th round like done in the previous 8 rows! DUH!

Onward finishing second sleeve, and then go back and frog the first sleeve and try again.

I would say, "take away my pointy sticks." But if I didn't have them at this moment in my life, I would have to hurt someone.

Knitting lessons are easier to grasp than life lessons.

Mystery Sweater KAL (part II)

P1010042
Originally uploaded by knitterbay2

Plugging along with the sweater. This is the front yoke of the sweater. Back yoke instructions arrived last night. Funny, looks similar to the front.
:-)