The Tilsons

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.

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.