It FITS!!! :)

First off I must ask you to forgive the HORRIBLE photos! But I was in my work uniform (it seems counter productive to change when I'm not going anywhere.) I must also apologize for my Dads messy house. and I must forewarn if you are at all offended by fat people please stop reading. I do not photograph well and I do not feel the need to suck in my stomach. I'm fat. My work clothes do not help that and I was trying on a half finished sweater!

I've been knitting away on this and have finally gotten to the part where I add the crochet boarder. However I am a little concerned and wondering if I should go another inch or so before I add it. The girls (boobs) are large and I don't need a line going through the bottom of them. (I hate shirts that have a line through the boob area! It draws the eye and doesn't look nice!)

I am also deciding if I should even add the crochet edge of if I should just keep knitting till I get to the bottom. I have this sick feeling this sweater was designed for a SKINNY women in mind with a flat chest. I am neither! So I'm a little nervous, but this is generally where I start to freak out on a sweater and quit! So to my 3 readers what do you think I should do?!

And now onto my current annoyance! I had to put like 1/2 the stitches onto waste yarn before I could really try it on. I did this so I wouldn't lose the stitches while I was trying it on. Normally this would be no problem but of course I didn't have a yarn needle and ended up using a tapestry needle. Which worked. However threading yarn through it took a lot of my patience!

So I'm asking opinions. Should I quit this project or should I keep going. And while I wait for answers I'm going to work on baby clothes for a friend I work with. The wonderful thing about baby clothes is they always look cute because they are little.

Thanks for reading! :)

Happy St. Patricks Day!!!!!

First off HAPPY ST. PATRICKS DAY!!! :) (With a name like irishshammrocks can I possibly deny my heritage!) Also be forewarned I am going to post in green today! :)

I worked at Cozy Cabin (the yarn store I frequent) on Saturday and got to sit in this comfy chair visit with great friends and work on my sweater! I even managed to ring people out without making the register EXPLODE! I guess what they say is true its about not panicking and being positive is true! :) While I was at the store on Saturday I managed to get to the section where I SEPARATED for my sleeves!

Look a sleeve! :) That being said it was not an easy road getting there! I had to rip out a row (which when you have over 300 stitches is a TRAGEDY!) and I could not for the life of me figure out the pattern. So when I got home I calmly sat down by myself and figured it out. Which luckily worked. So now I'm a few rows into the body. I have to go 15 inches before anything interesting happens. Onto stockinette! Which I don't mind doing!
I know this isn't the best picture. I'm still trying to get the photography part of blogging under control! If anyone has suggestions I would love to hear them! But you can kinda tell how far I am in this photo!
Now I must admit I have knitting ADD, so this photo is of my finished Monkey socks by Cookie A. Her sock patterns are my addiction thanks to Brenda! I've found that knitting socks is the best thing to work on at work because they aren't to large and thus don't get in anyones way. There is nothing worse than an annoying knitter! :)

Drifting even further off topic I want to thank Jill for posting about me in her blog! She is a great friend good boss and someone I'm thrilled I met! head over to her blog for great fashion advice, she is always the one i turn to!http://jillybeanstalk.blogspot.com/

Happy St. Patty's day and Happy Knitting!

"Whats the Skinnny?!"

Today I named my sweater! Mostly because Ravelry.com requires it. But I kinda like the name "Whats the Skinny!?" Mostly because I am not skinny! lol

This sweater is moving right along! I finished the upper back on Monday and joined for KNITTING IN THE ROUND! NO MORE PURLING until I get to the ribbing! I was thrilled! Now the sweater is started to look like a sweater! (Kinda and only if you are a knitter!) I am hoping that the edging you add at the end makes the cast on stitches for the front look a little better. I mean they look fine it's just that there is two inches of straight and than a slow increase which slopes into the front. The third picture down kinda shows what I'm talking about. Other than that I am thrilled with the sweater thus far! :)



I have 24 more rows until I seperate for the sleeves! :) So I'm going to get some knitting done tonight! I'll be back once the sleeves look like sleeves!

And so it begins.

As I said yesterday I choose the Skinny Empire pattern so knit as my FIRST complete sweater for myself.

Can we talk about the fact that I don't think it is fair that I don't look like this gorgeous (sideways!) woman! Oh well.

I decided to do the 3 XL size. It is a 53 1/4 inch bust. Which from my measurments should fit! I'm using Cascade 220 heathers yarn. I purchased it at Cozy Cabin, which is my favorite yarn store! My brother told me when I bought the yarn that it was a terrible color but I have always loved it. It is a gray with a little pink and blue shining through. I am using a size 4 (US) needle and a size 3 (US) needles.

My goal for yesterday was so swatch so I could figure out my gauge and to cast on the sweater. Now for every knitter who has EVER met me knows that I HATE to swatch! I never ever do it. However I felt that since I am actually going to finish this I should feel confident that I'm going to have enough yarn and that it will fit! So I swatched and figured out that i was spot on with my gauge. This is probably because I am the TIGHTEST knitter or record. I know you can't read the ruler but it says 4 inches and there are 24 stitches in there!

After i finished the swatch it was time to watch a movie with my brother and grandmother. (Across the Universe, terrible movie GREAT music.) Anyway I cast on and got through the first round of increases and started the second. It is boring at this point and not in the good way. I love just knitting because I don't have to pay attention to it. However this isn't like that because I am knitting and purling! I don't like purling all that much. It makes my right hand hurt especially on these needles. After about 2 hrs of knitting today I have one more increase row before I cast on the front of the sweater and start knitting in the round! Can't wait!!

I'll keep you posted! for now I'm going to Panera for salad and I'm going to see Alice in Wonderland. Where I'll hopefully finish knitting the foot on a very boring sock!

The saga of the sweater!

Sometimes this blog sits idly by why I read blogs about fashion, yarn, knitting, and politics and I do nothing. I am not good at keeping a diary (I never was), my livejournal was always a teenage bitch fest (and luckily has been deleted.) and now my life is so boring that no one wants to read about the silly little things that happen to me! (Which I am TOTALLY ok with!)

That being said I have been knitting seriously for about 2 years and in those two years I have NEVER sucessfully completed a sweater for myself! I have bought yarn to make sweaters (which when you are a 2 or 3 XL is A LOT of yarn!) and i have started the sweaters, but than something always happens. With the February Lady sweater I screwed up the lace pattern (note to self lace + overnight work = VERY BAD IDEA) and ripped it out. (Truth be told about half of the garter stitch top is still sitting in my drawer waiting to be ripped!) Than I cast on Nora (fromInterweave Knits winter 2010) becuase I loved it! But I didn't have enough yarn and I was worried that after all the work I did it wouldn't fit! So it is sitting in a basket waiting for my to make a decision.

And than Brenda (Best knitting friend EVER! lol) Sent me a pattern from Knitting Daily called Zarabel which I promptly fell in love with and blindly cast on using the yarn I had left from the failed February Lady Sweater. I did the two inches of ribbing at the bottom and did the first 25 rows of the COMPLICATED cabled/ lace pattern and LOVED how it was coming out. however I was having vision of running out of yarn, the sweater not fitting, it looking TERRIBLE on me etc. So last night I pulled it from my needles and ripped a few rows. Than I tried it on. (Of course the thing was BIG ON ME!!!!!)

But if it weren't for doing that I wouldn't have decided to write in my blog (This is me FINALLY MAKING my point!) I thought MAYBE if I kept track of my sweater knitting and pretended that people were reading the blog that I would actually feel that I HAD to finish! So last night I went to my yarn book shelf (yes I have a shelf) and went through ALL my plus size knitting books to find the perfect pattern for yarn I already had.

What I found was Custom Knits written by Wendy Bernard. I loved this book when I saw it and my brother got it for me for my birthday last year. However I haven't made anything out of it yet. So after looking at EVERY pattern twice I settled on the Skinny Empire. Of course this calls for a DK weight yarn which I don't have. But I was determined. So starting today I am going to make a sweater a blog about it. Begining to end. Good, bad and ugly! I'm going to swatch today and either post again today when I cast on or tomorrow.

So this is my promise. I promise to FINISH this sweater. I will blog about it at least once a week! I don't promise not to talk about my job or the other projects I'm working on. But this will mostly be about the sweater!

Wish me luck!