Saturday, March 6, 2010

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!

4 comments:

  1. you can do it; i'll make you!!

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  2. thanks Jill I'll need all the help I can get! :)

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  3. I am looking forward to seeing your sweater on you at knit group! I like the blog idea and you are as fun to read as in person, I am following you..

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  4. Thanks for following! I love followers! :) (this means I have to stop pretending people don't read this don't I! lol)

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