And because I know you’ve been waiting…
Mariah photos are here. Now, I wasn’t smart enough to take pictures of it when I had it seamed up. I think I was more frustrated with the fact that it didn’t fit right, you know? So I didn’t bother until today.
Here’s what the sleeves look like. I didn’t bother taking a photo of the back or sides, because they look pretty much like a back and sides stuck on a piece of waste yarn for a stitch holder. The sleeves, however are a little bit more exciting. For those of you who haven’t been paying attention, I am re-working the sleeves in smaller needles. So you see here full length sleeves that were knit at too large a gauge, being ripped and knit straight into new and improved sleeves. The originals really weren’t that bad, and if I were smart I’d just USE THE EXISTING SLEEVES ALREADY, instead of reknitting them. I’ll sleep on that. There’s a chance that I will come to my senses before I rip too much back.
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Mariah. Sweet, pretty Mariah. She was almost done. I did alll the knitting parts. And then I proceeded to seam them up. A few observations:
The yoke was HUGE. By nature yokes are big. When you think about it, two sleeves+back+two front panels=a LOT of knitting. So it took awhile for the shoulder shaping and hood to be knit.
Also hoods are deceivingly large. They look all cute and not so big when hanging off your sweater, but when you think about how much of the hood is just overlapping on itself you can begin to see exactly how large those things are.
I learned to keep my swatch. By the time my sweater was done I was knitting nowhere near the perfect gauge that I had originally knit.
Find out what the length of sleeves in directions really means. My arms are small. After seaming the sweater up the sleeves were about four inches long. This is fine for clothes that you buy in stores but when we’re talking about something that I took the time to knit myself… I just want it to be perfect. I don’t want to lose any sleeve detail and I don’t want to be rolling any part of my knitting so that it isn’t hanging off me.
So in the end I ripped. I knit new swatches. I changed needle sizes (I’m now using 5s instead of 7s.) I am totally redoing the sleeves. The back and front pieces are on stitch holders, but if they look really bad with the new gauge I may end up redoing those as well. I’m not sure if I started with the loose knitting at the yoke or before.
I am taking a break from this project.
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As someone on the journals list just said (I’m catching up,) December is hectic and insane. Now I know December is way less any of those things now that I’m not working, but it’s still pretty hard to keep up, what with the cats knocking over the tree, and the kids being home now for winter break.
And here I am, woefully behind on my holidailies entries. msh keeps hounding me to write something. My uncreative brain is resisting. Not only is it resisting, it doesn’t have anything to say. And so today I will break the rule of the crossover post. And maybe sometime next week I will have pictures to show you.
This week I started knitting the mariah. GO LOOK! It’s really a beautiful sweater. Not only is it beautiful, but it is full of cabley goodness. Cables and things that I’ve never tried before – like a sweater! I’ve never tried an entire sweater. Well, no I did start a cami from vogueknitting earlier this year, but didn’t get very far. I always thought my first sweater would be of the sleeveless variety, mostly because sleeves look hard.
But then the winter knitty came out and I see this beautiful pattern… And just in time I had purchased a couple of sweaters from the thrift shop, one that knits up perfectly to gauge. So after I ripped my second hand sweater, and rolled the yarn into balls (incidentally I have decided that relaxing the yarn in skeins the way this person recommends is NOT the way to go. I guess it works for lots of people, but I end up with a round of ramen that is tangly and does not want to be wound into balls. I’m much more comfortable winding the yarn into balls right out of the sweater. I’ve read that some people knit right out of the sweater, but I am hoping that my winding the yarn into balls is helping it to relax a bit.
I swatch and see that I need size seven needles. Circulars. I have a set of straights but they are short and the pattern wants me to have both straights and circs. So needlehunting I go. So I google AGAIN for my local yarn stores and find that there’s one that I missed in my first ten google rounds. One that is apparently right up the street from me. (yay!) At the yarn shop which sells coffee and doesn’t smell stinky (Knit One, Chat Too in Calgary, in case you were wondering,) I meet two of the loveliest ladies ever who are so helpful and even go as far as to look up the pattern on the internet for me when I gave them a blank look in response to one of their questions. Very helpful and nice and never made me feel stupid. Because you see, I am generally afraid to discuss my knitting in public. Since I taught myself, I don’t like being in the position where people can actually TELL that I’ve taught myself. Chicken, yes.
The story gets even better! I got my first set of Addis on this expedition. And they rock.
***
I wrote that two weeks ago and have not returned to finish the darn thing. Nor have I kept up with holidailies. Again.
To sum things up:
I had the best Christmas ever. It’s hard being away from home during the holidays, but this was the first time I got to spend Christmas with my very own family. It was so much better than I imagined.
2005 is here.
I got even MORE knitting needles and love them so much.
I am a year older.
I will write more this year.
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