Ahhh CRAP!!!

I have been cooking along on James' sweater. I have been having so much fun knitting this. I think I am going to miss it when it is actually done.


















The sleeves have knit up nicely. I don't know what force was in effect when I was knitting the second sleeve, but I had to rip it out at least 4 times. It was completely crazy. I couldn't seem to follow simple k2, p2 for one round then k next round and repeat. Sounds easy eh? Yeah it is, but my mind refused to function for it so the cuff was ripped 4 times then the fair isle sections were ripped at least 2 times. The first sleeve went so smoothly, I just have no clue what happened with the second. It was so aggravating. I pushed on and made it through finally.













How cute is this going to be when it is done?! Should I be this excited about it?



















So now that both sleeves are done and the arm holes in the sweater are large enough to fit the sleeves I joined the sweater back into the round. I knit a few inches then did the decreases for the neck. I picked up the stitches for the neck and it just wasn't working for me. It looked puckered and huge. So I decide to sew on the sleeves. I have done sleeves and sewn my knitting together before, so not a problem right? WRONG! No matter how hard I tried you could see the sewing thread on the outside. RIP, RIP, RIP, RIP....... Out came the sleeves, more times than I can count. OK fine, I will sew in the ends that are in my way and will need to be done anyway. That part went ok. Whew at least one thing went right.






After many tears of frustration I headed off to my FNSLYS to get some much needed help on Thursday. The pattern calls for you to whip stitch the sleeves in and I was instructed to use the mattress stitch instead after a few failed attempts at the whip stitch still showing the yarn on the outside. The mattress stitch worked so much better. So I had the first sleeve on and something just didn't look right.

Can you guess where I am going here?????

Remember I rejoined the sweater in the round after the sleeve holes?.

That is where I went horribly wrong. Instead of making shoulders I was making one HUGE neck hole. I tried to convince Christina that James has a huge head and shoulders in a sweater were over-rated, but she just wasn't buying it.

So I am sure you know what happens here right?. *SIGH*

One sleeve was sewn in so it had to partially come out. We were going to just cut out the top part, but the piece of yarn that was cut wasn't the seaming yarn. AHHHHHH!!! I felt the urge to pass out. I tried to convince myself that it was all ok, but my mind kept screaming NOOOOOOO. "People do things like this all the time and can fix them without a problem." Still feeling faint. "Don't worry you are going to have to rip back past the cut point anyway, it will all be ok." Faintness still hanging around. "Just be thankful that it wasn't the fair isle part" Ok now I am coming around. I know that Christina was talking to me in there somewhere too, but my mind was screaming at me so much that I couldn't tell you her exact words, but I know she kept reassuring me that it would all be ok. After a few deep breaths, Christina's reassurance and me knowing deep down that it was ok, I was able to get past it and rip it back to where it needed to be.

Before I left that evening I had the front knit back up to where it needed to be and the neck shaping done. I also only had a few more rows to go on the back to do before I could do a three needle bind off for the shoulders that are "supposed" to be there.

I am really close to being done. Maybe in the next few days I will have pictures to show you of a finished sweater.