Bubblegum Pink And The Sweater Saga

This week is back to life as normal. Our holiday is over. Along with all the cleaning and sorting, there was lots of stitching only the knitting kind not the sewing kind. There was not a stitch of that. In fact, there was no fabric shopping, not even any fabric looking, or even any fabric stroking. I did shuffle through some patterns getting them ready to mail to Carolyn. I had several duplicates and patterns that just didn't work for me and she does such amazing things with basic patterns that I can hardly wait to see what she sews with these. It'll be inspiring.

Above is a the back of a little girl's sweater, size 6-7 years. It's two inches of ribbing followed by stockinette stitch. Basic knitting. I did most of the back Saturday afternoon. If I were to follow the pattern, the front has...

... kangaroo pockets, a zipper or button opening, and a fold down collar. I'm ignoring that and viewing it as a blank canvas with the intention of developing my own stitch pattern within the number guidelines AND of experimenting with an idea for adding the sleeves. Neat, efficient, and well done construction steps are really important to me whatever I'm creating. That's how I ended up writing my book Press For Success. Since returning to knitting, I've been frustrated by the lack of neatness when sewing the pieces together. So far, I've learned to use a three needle cast off to form a clean shoulder seam and to knit the first stitch of every row so I can sew the side seams together bump to bump. I've also developed a combination of crochet and knitting for picking up collars that results in a neat edge inside and out. Now, I'm working on the sleeves because...

... it was the fateful sleeve that led to the sweater saga that follows. In the image above, I've pinned it in place, tried it on, and the length and width are fine. What's hard to see in the picture is that the shape of the sleeve cap is very square, which led to pressing, which is probably not a good thing to do with acrylic yarn, even if you use low heat, and a pressing cloth, but especially if you forget to turn off the burst of steam. Although the sweater looks quite lovely on Millicent from the....

... front, and even from the back if you don't look too closely, in real life on the...

... back you can see the shiny, iron sized, mushed spot where I totally crucified the yarn. Not. Wearable. After nine months of knitting, that was rather upsetting so I've chosen instead to focus on the positive. Let's call it an unwearable muslin. The style looks good on me. I'd make a few changes. Next time, I'll knit instead of rib the sleeves and curve the sleeve cap more and I'll add short rows through the bottom back to allow extra length for my high hip and I'll knit a larger size on the front to cover my bust but overall, its good. The front...

... is not as originally designed. The original cable came out of knit stitches and was right up against the garter stitch of the button band which I liked knit on but preferred in a ribbing stitch so I started over. And then, I started over again because I wanted pearl stitches on either side of the cable to push it out more. And then...

... I laddered down some stitches and picked them back up switching knit stitches to purl stitches on the front, again to highlight the cable more. And it all worked. Which goes to show that it's fun to experiment and that there's lots of learning involved even though knitting takes forever longer than sewing, which is why I'm knitting child size this time.

Talk soon - Myrna

Grateful - the ability to let disappointment go and carry on instead of feeling inadequate and quitting