Honestly? At first glance, I was a tad underwhelmed. Fall Knitty had so many glamorous, in-your-face gorgeous sweaters and things, and when you first look at the thumbnail pattern page, the new one looks a bit like the extremities issue. But it's Knitty, right? It's gotta be good. And it is, naturally. Eiffel? The Brown Bag? Monkey? Lauren? I love Knitty. I can't believe the incredible job they are doing over there every time.
And they have Sheldon, the turtle. Sheldon the undressable turtle. If you are sensitive to knitted turtle nakedness, do not go look at Sheldon. Sheldon's removable shell means, of course, that you can knit him more than one shell outfit. A shell for every day of the week. A holiday shell. A beach shell. I will knit Sheldon.
In the interest of full disclosure - and due to lack of postable progress pictures of secret Christmas stuff - I decided to share with you the memories of the summer of desperate sweaters. Memories both misty and water-colored.
This heap of yarn in tasteful shades of blue and green weighs about four pounds and represents most of my summer knitting 2006. Three sweaters, each of them wrong. Oh, so very wrong.
I think I already posted this one earlier. There is nothing wrong with making up a sweater as you go along. It would probably be good though if you were to put some actual ... y'know ... THOUGHT into it. Please have a good look at that, uh, extra spacious sleeve. And I did not stop when I saw the first one. Oh, no, I made two of them, but I fished this sweater out of the frog pond to take the picture. The sweater was already taking a dive there because I like the yarn a lot.
Next up: Cinxia.
There is nothing wrong with the pattern. I like it a lot. But chunky, elastic yarn that will pull up and make the cropped cardigan even more so? Bad call. Also, Cinxia is not really the best choice for tall people with really long arms and ... ahem ... lots of logs in front of the cabin, as we say in these parts. Again, the stupidity is all mine, go knit Cinxia if you feel like it, the pattern is great. Excuse the blurry picture. I took all of them during the 5 minutes of daylight we had yesterday. And we haven't had any since.
At this point you'd think that a charitable soul would have taken me aside and told me to knit stockinette socks or maybe wristwarmers for the duration. I'm the first to admit that I was completely out of my mind for about 10 months out of 12 this year. I should not have been knitting sweaters.
However, I remained undaunted. When I needed to think about the two not so totally successful sweater experiences, I did what I always do. I blamed my weight. The months of not leaving my mom's bedside for more than a couple of hours a day took their toll on my never less than ample figure. No regular exercise, but plenty of comfort eating. You do the math. So I decided that I had just gotten too fat for these sweaters to look good on me, and things would be peachy in Sweaterland, if I could only find a nice, roomy and relaxed pattern to make the most of my remaining assets (logs, cabin, you know what I'm saying). Again, take a peek at that monstrous sleeve up there. Weight loss was clearly not the answer.
But I still had yarn and was not afraid to use it. Enter Everyday Tweed. They got lovely things over at the Garter Belt, you should check it out if you haven't yet. Everyday Tweed has it all. Easy to knit, comes with my favourite type of neckline, it has picot edging, and it was even long enough without the need to add extra inches (I'm 5'11" or 1.80 m, the standard sweater length of 24-26 inches hits me in really unfortunate places). I was motivated. I had found the perfect pattern. All systems go.
Looking back I'm finding it hard to explain this. I vaguely remember being bored with all that stockinette so I felt the need to add the ill-advised band of twisted rib somewhere around what I thought to be the waist (trying it on or measuring it to find the waist or sucking up the stockinette - none of these viable options occurred to me). The sweater is 32 inches long, and the fact that it still looks really short and boxy should tell you just how bloody big it is (especially if you've read the Yarnharlot's knitting group adventures. I've read them. I still did this.) It's really hard to drown a person of my stature in any garment, but this sweater? Well, I knit it in the biggest size (that's a 57-inch chest. My chest? Well, I'm not gonna say but it's not 57 inches) and when my yarn gave me a slightly larger gauge I was pleased. Relaxed and roomy, remember? My careful study of Big Girl Knits? Forgotten. Caution? To the wind. I even had the wonderful idea of switching to bigger needles as I made my way down, so the sweater would have a bit of a flattering flare around the hips. Snort. This sweater is many things, but flattering is not one of them. When I finally tried it on, it slipped right down over my shoulders. It was, after all, just a touch too big. Never mind, thought I, I'll just add a couple of inches to the neckline ribbing. Piece of cake. Surprisingly, that did not help the sweater, but it did make more of my assets, because they were now almost completely encased in 6 inches of bulky (again twisted) rib. What was up with all that twisted rib? I don't have a clue.
There ya go. I spent the entire summer knitting three sweaters. None of them is even remotely usable. With the time and energy spent on them, I could have knit socks for the entire German football team or started my own Dulaan Project. It won't come as a surprise if I say that I've been a bit sweater-shocked ever since. I might need a spot of sweater trauma intervention.
" 
No comments:
Post a Comment