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! )
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.
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.
"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.
2 comments:
Are you in my head? Or maybe it's because they are kid sized sweaters. There must be bad knitting karma over kid sweaters right now.
Please tell me how to get this pattern. Thank you.
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