The Tilsons

Wow.  I am pretty pissed at this point.  Knitted the back of the sweater - too big.  Ripped and knitted it again - soooooo small. Added side pieces (ack!) - fits better. KNITTING UNEVEN??  Look at this.  Just LOOK!

See my finger there in the left hand corner?  See how the front is coming up over the back?  Then see the other side - upper right hand corner, how there is a bit of ripped knitting there?  See how the ripped knitting doesn’t meet up with the back?  Those two sides of the front, they are supposed to be even with the back two sides.  Neither one of them are! ARGH!

Justin suggested that I not worry about it, and give the sweater to him.  He would wear it even if it is a bit crooked.  Sweet of him.  But I said no.

He then suggested knitting a triangle and sewing it in there (he is clearly less of a perfectionist than I am)  I said no.

He asked if I was going to frog it.  I said yes.

And I did. Then I washed it, and put little hooks in the wall so that I can look at it.

And think about how much I am dreading trying again.  I think I have depressed knitters syndrom (DKS).  I think I need to knit something very easy to bring my confidence back up.

Handspun.  Who would have thought.

Well. Here it is, the back of the sweater…

Remember how I said that I was going to take the sides of the sweater in, and do real tapering for the waist on the front of the sweater?  Well, I had my brother come by for a fitting (I know, a luxury we don’t all have for christmas presents) and realized that the sweater was 36 STITCHES too big at the waist.  18!  That would be a lot of bulk to have dangling off of the inside of your sweater.  That would be a visible representation of my laziness that would be forever glaring me in the face - not laziness in making my own yarn, or knitting my own fabric, but laziness of pretending that after all that work, 36 stitches of fabric dongling around inside of a sweater is no big deal. Then deciding that no one would notice, even myself.  Its not even a complicated pattern for crying in the mud.

So, last night, I frogged it.  Justin’s opinion “You can’t hide that much fabric, you wouldn’t be able to live with yourself!” pushed me over the edge.  So, I frogged not just the back, but the little bit of front too, because I had already gone past the point of tapering.  Frogging the whole thing took about 10 minutes.  That is roughly 1/10th of the time it took to knit it. Remarkable. Read the complete Post.

Wow. I love knitting my own handspun yarn. If you don’t have a wheel, and you are a knitter, I highly recommend learning so that you can knit with something you made! First off, it is so fulfilling to see yarn hanging and drying that is becoming plump and soft. Then, when you touch it, and roll it between your fingers, it is neat to say “I made this”, then when you knit the whole back of a sweater and hold it up poking your finger at the centre of it to check and see that it really is a solid piece of fabric, it is a little like giving birth (minus the pain). You say “I can’t believe you came from me!”

So the sweater. Retrofit is really simple, being stockinette stitch. It has given me a chance to listen to some great audiobooks, and speed up my knitting and thus has moved along quite quickly.
A couple of other recommendations: Read the complete Post.

A couple of weeks ago I started spinning the yarn for my first “real” project.  Yes, I did some handspun that is still sitting in my chest waiting to be made into a felted roving ball holder, and I spun the yarn for Seva’s Lace Shawl… but those were simple.  There was no particular guage to maintain, in fact the lumpier it was, the better.

I chose the pattern from the Fall Knitty 2008 - Retrofit by Jesse Loesberg.  I like it more than his other pattern (Avast) and the Hero Pullover, both of which I was considering until I noticed some things.  Avast has cables.  Justin notified me that cables are bad for men. (too bad… I love knitting cables)  And the Hero Pullover, well… it has DROP SHOULDERS.  I don’t know about you, but I think that drop shoulders make men look slumpy.  Unless they are standing like the guy in the picture in the magazine all the time, drop shoulders drop.  Further more, men rarely stand like the guy in the picture.

Back to spinning.  I began slowly, drafting fiber… Read the complete Post.