The Sweater Saga

So, let me tell you all a little story about how I ended up knitting a sweater twice and still don't quite have it right.

It all started with a pair of mittens, a year ago, that I knit with a beautiful and soft kettle dyed pure merino wool by Malabrigo. I feel in love with this yarn and decided it deserved to be more than just a pair of mittens.

I spent many days and weeks looking for the perfect pattern that would work with this yarn and finally found a pattern that I liked and would worked with this yarn. The pattern I used was from Berrocco and called Camille.

Now, I have a bad habit of not really getting a gauge on projects and with this one I forced myself to really carefully do a whole swatch. I even measure my arms and torso to determine what size to knit.

Once done with this part, I quickly started the front piece with the cables. Got through the front and back rather quickly, but had to put the project down for a while to get hats knit up for my son's Cub Scout Den. I then got distracted with more hat requests from my boys. The longer I delayed the less driven I was to get the sleeves done. Well, then it was summer and for some reason, knitting a sweater in the summer is just too much of a reminder that winter is always just around the corner when you live in Alaska.

In the fall, it was time to try and focus once again on my sweater. So, I got one sleeve done, then the second sleeve done. I decided to try it on before I seamed it up and found it was way too short. So I did the only brave thing I could thing of at the time and I frogged the whole thing. Yep frogged it!

Well, know it was time to focus on getting all my Christmas knitting done. I knit 4 pairs of felted mittens and 2 hats. Kept the load a little low this year ('07) as last year I tried to knit 6 of the Tiny Heart Sachets from the '06 Holiday Interweave Magazine, plus 2 cabled scarfs, and 2 pairs of socks. All in November and December. Despite they're small size, they were rather time consuming and I had a numb spot on my right middle finger for weeks after, from those hearts.

So, just before Christmas, it was time again to do this sweater. This time I started with the sleeves and would do the fun part last. I'd read this tip somewhere in a magazine and it definately worked for me. I stayed focused the whole time because I couldn't wait to get to knit the cabled front section again. Cabling is so addictive.

Sweater was knit in a larger size in about 3 weeks. So now it was time to sew it together.

Another bad habit I have is not blocking and, that's just what I didn't do before I did the seams. BAD, BAD, BAD! I'm not that great at seams yet and it took me about 5 hours to put this sweater all together. And what do I have? A sweater that should of been blocked and doesn't quite fit right.

I suppose if I was an 18-25 year old girl, it would be a great sweater, but when you've birthed two kids, and are now a 40 something, a little skin isn't a fashion statement in a sweater.

I took the sweater with me to my knitting group and got several suggestions on how to fix it, among them cutting the bottom row off and knitting more length at bottom, blocking it now, slouch more or wear a longer shirt under it.

I think the right answer is the first suggestion, but way too scary for me. I already slouch enough as it is so I'm going with blocking it and wearing a longer shirt underneath for a while. Eventually, I'll just have to break down and do the right thing, but with knitting friends around to hold my hand.




Oh, here's a picture of our neighborhood bull moose, who was across the street just as my son and I were headed out to take the sweater picture. Unfortunately, he headed to the neighbors backyard before we could safely pose with him in the background. This bull was wandering around a few weeks ago with only one antler left and it must of felt real awkward walking around like that. Oh, and the dumpster behind him is there because my neighbors pipes froze last week (when it was -7) and flooded their downstairs while they weren't home. They know have a system set up at the house that will call their cell phones if the house ever goes under 55 degrees and a light on the front of the house that will flash red, too. We're going to invest in this phone system if we ever leave the state during the winter.