The good
news…
is that I
finished Ketki’s first sock, and started the second. I like it a lot.
The bad
news…
is that my
husband tried on the vest, and it won’t do.
It’s fine
in the two respects I was worried about, length and breadth. Where it falls down
is that the shoulders are too wide, and actually hang down a couple of inches
over the upper arm in a most unattractive fashion. And the v-neck is too deep,
by a couple of inches. So much for winging it.
All the
verbs in that paragraph should in fact be in the past tense. The vest couldn’t
have been left like that, hoping for the best. I’ve got to try again. And
experience teaches that it would be fatal to lay it aside while adding it to a
mental to-do list. The only course was to frog, and fast. I’ve done it.
I did allow
myself to take some time de solido die for the task, rather than assigning it
to the precious evening knitting slot. It took a while, what with detaching the
neck and armhole ribbing and dealing with those alternate skeins on the upper
back. (I think I’ve got enough of the darker yarn that I won’t have to do that
again.) But the job is done, and the stitches recovered.
I have
discovered in the past – although I don’t think I’ve ever had a disaster
involving as much re-knitting as this one – that once the stitches are back on
the needle, and persuaded to sit correctly, and the knitting is going forward
again, all sadness is forgotten. We shall see.
I’ll finish
Ketki’s socks, so as to be able to hand them over at Easter and see them on her
feet. Then I will have to start another pair, so that I have something in the
emergency-knitting-bag for waiting rooms and whatever life offers in the way of
out-of-the-house knitting time. I’ll follow Kristie’s excellent plan of
having a plain-vanilla pair on the go there, and save the exciting stuff for
when I can return to the Sock Project.
But I
laughed out loud, catdownunder,
at your comment yesterday: “Can’t you just make them the way you always have
made them, because they fit that way?”
Do I
deserve some more sock yarn, to cheer myself up for the frogging? KF’s Random
Stripe “Sizzle”? Van Gogh “Bedroom in Arles
Watch this
space.
I’ve added
Joyce Williams’ Latvian Dreams to that little list in my electronic Filofax
(yesterday), for the toe-up heel cast on. Thanks, knitting08816 and stash haus.
Commiserations on the vest - I agree though that immediate frogging and picking up of stitches is the best approach. Any languishing tends to just multiply the dissatisfaction and feelings of tedium. Hope it goes better this time round... have you worked out what number of shoulder stitches you are aiming for this time?
ReplyDeleteOf course you deserve more sock yarn or any other yarn for the pain of frogging! Especially since you did it immediately!
ReplyDeleteViva la bandiera italiana!!
Jean, so sorry about the vest. It is so hard to get the shoulders right on a vest - the actual width needed is so much narrower than what the eye wants to believe while knitting (at least in my experience) - especially when you're adding arm bands at the end. Good for you getting it ripped and ready to re-knit right away!
ReplyDeleteAlso, darn you! I had a bad day yesterday and needed a little yarn-retail therapy. I followed that link to Marasca yarn and then did a little googling to find an American source, and guess what? three balls of it on their way to my door...and I've been so *good* about not over-indulging in yarn purchases lately. :-)
This is what I never understand about all those amateur designers out there. Every time I try it, i find myself having to ravel and reknit, which seems like such a waste of effort. Why not use a commercial v-neck pullover pattern as a reference point before you reknit?
ReplyDelete