Knit and Crochet Blog Week day four: Write about the fate of a past knitting project. Whether it be something that you crocheted or knitted for yourself or to give to another person. An item that lives with you or something which you sent off to charity. There are a lot of different aspects to look at when looking back at a knitting project and it can make for interesting blogging, as much of the time we blog about items recently completed, new and freshly completed. It is not so often that we look back at what has happened to these items after they have been around for a while. How has one of your past knits lived up to wear. Maybe an item has become lost. Maybe you spent weeks knitting your giant-footed dad a pair of socks in bright pink and green stripes which the then ‘lost’. If you have knit items to donate to a good cause, you could reflect on the ways in which you hope that item is still doing good for it’s owner or the cause it was made to support.
Where is it now? Why, it's in my clothes cupboard of course! It's the first sweater I ever knit for myself. On a trip to New Brunswick, Mom and I had an opportunity to visit and tour the Briggs & Little woolen mill. What fun! And while in the mill store I saw a knitted sample of this sweater and fell in love. I bought the pattern book, I bought the yarn and I set out to knit myself this sweater.
The biggest rookie mistake I made was in calculating the size. I measured from my underarm to wrist and used that for the sleeve length. I measured from my underarm to hips and used that for the trunk length. Only after I finished the sweater did I realize that the pattern had a fair bit of "ease" and that the underarm of the sweater was actually more than a couple of inches below my actual underarm. My sweater was way too large.
What to do? Rip it out to start again? Give it away? Throw it away? Finally I decided to take a chance - I machine washed and tumble dried my 100% wool sweater and voilà. By some happy chance the sweater shrunk about 15% to exactly the size it should have been in the first place. Serendipity! Now it's my favourite sweater; perfect for those cold windy winter surfing days by the lake.
6 comments:
That was your FIRST sweater???? It is AWESOME!
I bow down to your knitting skills!
Wow, you were lucky with that sweater!
I was wondering if you could give me some advice on yarn shopping in Toronto. What are some good shops to visit. I have Lettuce Knit, The Purple Purl and Knitomatic on our agenda for Sunday. Would you suggest anywhere else? Thanks!!
My first sweater is still in my closet too but it's totally unwearable... my second sweater is only marginally better. I finally got the hang of it by the third or fourth.
I can't believe your first sweater was so detailed! I'm glad you found a way to get it to the right size!
I tried that with my too big first sweater, and it got shorter...but not narrower. boxy!
Post a Comment