28 August 2012
Knitting mom’s new sweater. Hopefully with the 50% acrylic and 50% nylon content, the caregivers won’t felt/shrink it. Fingers crossed that they won’t melt it, either! Chose this color because mom is very picky about colors (doesn’t like dark colors, doesn’t like red). She LOVES white, but unfortunately, she’s gotten a bit messy and is constantly getting food and drinks down her clothes. So white was out. She loves purples, so lavender it is (I loved Berrocco’s purple yarn for her-- Grape Jelly, 9739-- but mom doesn’t like dark colors, so…. Here’s praying that when I do the back (I decided to start with the front), I won’t go cross-eyed and hateful about this pale lavender after rows and rows and rows of reverse stockinette stitches………..

31 August 2012
Hmmm… this is coming along much faster than I’d expected! Just did the garter stitch part this morning (but it doesn’t look right--have to re-read the pattern, do a bit of research, and MAY have to frog back 10 rows to fix). Love how the shaping is coming out. I did make some changes, though. My mom is tiny, she’s definitely an S if not an XS. However, she hates fitted clothes and her favorite sweater actually measures 40” around the bust (dont’ forget, she wears 2-3 LAYERS of sweaters at a time!). Anyway, I forgot to mention-- I cast on for a small (114 stitches), worked all of the “every 4th row” decreases (9 decreases), but only 2 of the 5 “every 6th row” decreases. I ended with 32 stitches on each side, the pattern’s Medium size. I’m planning to work the rest of the sweater as if I’m knitting the medium, so that the end sweater will be 38 inches around the bust instead of only 35.5 inches. Shape is probablygoing to end up being more “bell” than “a-line,” but that’s ok. It’ll be a little longer, too, but that’s ok as well. I think it’ll be really cute on my mom but not so fitted that she would hate it. I’m also planning to make the sleeves as long as she likes them, as well. She doesn’t do 3/4 sleeves, lol. Geez, my mom sounds particular, doesn’t she? I just want her to be comfortable, so it’s ok with me! ♥

1 Sept 2012
Finished the front and am now working on the back….

4 Sept 2012
Oh, pffffth! I just finished the back and the front is longer! And I know it’s the neckline-- I could not really understand the instructions and didn’t do it right. I think I have it figured out and frogged back a little bit and will reknit 1 more repeat of the leaf/cable part, and then bind off the 19 stitches in the center. I did the math several times and it SHOULD work out. But what do I know?! Ha! Wish more people have worked this sweater so I can read their project notes…..

5 Sept 2012
Ok… I frogged back to the point where I had 13 leaf/cable repeats. Mentally knitted along in the pattern, but if I did that, I’d have 10 extra unknit stitches. That HAS to be wrong. So, I think I should knit 1 more leaf/cable repeat, and then I’ll have enough stitches to work the raglan decreases AND the neckline bind-off as instructed….. or maybe not. if I do one more leaf/cable repeat, I’ll be going down 20 stitches not 10……… hmmmm… back to the research table!

6 Sept 2012
Hmmmm…. redid it but came up 3/4 of an inch short in the front (compared to the back piece). Puzzled over that last night and then again this morning before I realized that I missed the 4th 4-row decrease in the arm shaping! That should give me back that 3/4 inch (because there’s no decreasing for 4 rows instead of the every other row decreases that the rest of the armhole shaping entails). I frogged back another 20 rows to address that. Seriously considering just reknitting the entire front, though….

7 October 2012
Ok, after a 2-week break, I got back to this sweater, Finished off both sleeves yesterday, and early this morning just improvised the re-worked neck. I tried to do it as written for the 5th time and failed. Someone suggested that I get some graph paper and plot out the raglan decreases and figure out how to do the neckline decreases so I reach the top of the dang thing. And it did the trick. So, now on to seaming!

8 October 2012

So…. I’m sorry to report that it has NOT been a good weekend for Tina’s Knitting Projects! Let’s see-I finished the beaded Ishbel shawl, and before I soaked it for blocking, I decided to remove a row of beads which looked off-centered an
d odd to me by crushing them. Brilliant idea-- except the beads wasn’t the only thing that got crushed-- so did the yarn! YIKES! Thank goodness I noticed after 3 beads! So I had to make 3 repairs. Kinda winged it because I had no idea what I was doing. I may end up frogging to that point and reknitting. Now, if that wasn’t bad enough, last night, I was seaming up my mom’s sweater. Then I was weaving in the ends and snipping the excess off. Well, I accidentally snipped the sweater. It has a freakin’ HOLE!!!! Right in the front!!! On one of the points of interest!!!!! #@%@#$#^^!@@!!!!!

Lucky me-- I get to perform sweater surgery after I finish reseaching how to do this.

Honestly, here’s what I really want to do.

1. Reknit the dang thing because it might be too small for my mom (i.e. too fitted and she likes the big flour-sack look).

2. Reknit the dang thing because I discovered that although the pattern didn’t say to do this, expert knitters recommend knitting a couple of stockinette stitches on the ends of pieces to be seamed so that it’s easier to seam. NO KIDDING! My side and underarm seams looks like a 3rd grader did them! I could not make the seam smooth. Reverse stockinette is NOT easy to seam!

3. Cry

4. Cry some more

I’m so MAD at myself!

Later
Well, I just spent 3 hours trying to practice repairs on a swatch. Just not working…. Sigh. Will try again tomorrow.

13 October 2012
Well, finally figured out the fix but couldn’t quite master it. On the wrong side, I duplicate stitched until I got to one edge of the hole, then I pushed the needle through to the front, being sure to do that last duplicate stitch in the correct stitch, then I grafted the hole back together using Kitchener in purl stitch, and then it all went to hell. I could NOT figure out which stitch to thread the needle though before pushing it to the back again. I can see now that I probably should have continued 1 more Kitchener stitch into the fabric on a PURL-leave stitch instead of the knit slip off deal. In any case, I decided that it was good enough. This yarn was starting to come apart due to too much handling and I decided to leave well enough alone and stick a fork in it….

My friend Leslie modeled it for me, as she’s almost the same size as my mom (Leslie is slightly smaller). I felt better about it after that.

The neckline-- I’m pleased with how I picked up the stitches on both sides of the raglan on the front, however, it looks pretty “off” over the design down the center. Not sure what the deal is-- maybe it just needs to be blocked. I did run into a small problem -- I had to kind of improvise the decreases (remember my neckline problems?) and wasn’t sure how many stitches to pick up. So what I did was folded the BACK neckline in half and placed a marker in the center and both ends. Then I divvied up the rest of the neckline using that first division as my guide, then folded each of those divisions in half to make my working sections smaller. Then counted (13 sections), and then took the number of stitches the pattern says to pick up and divided it by 13-- and I could see it wouldn’t work (stitches too far apart), so I took the next size up’s numbers and divided by 13 and it seemed more even (7 stitches picked up per section). And it worked!

So, here’s what I will do differently on the next one (because you knew there was going to be another Alpine Meadow in my project notebook, right?):

1. On the sides of the body and sleeve pieces that will later be seamed, knit 2 stockinette stitches at the end. Forget the slipped stitch deal-- it didn’t help, and forget the knit it like the pattern says deal, that didn’t help either. Reverse stockinette is HARD to seam smoothly!

2. Knit it a little longer. I’ve never liked the lift-my-arm-up-see-my-belly look. On ANYONE. Especially me with my fat tummy….

3. Wider sleeves around the forearm? Not sure.

4. Use the technique of slipping a yarn over in the decrease around the neckline sequence-- it’ll make it smoother rather than laddered. Or like stairs, I mean. Turns out it wasn’t a problem picking up stitches for the neckline on the “stairs,” but it bugged me a bit.

5. Don’t cut the weaved-in ends too close to the sweater! That’s the most important one. :-P

Well, I’ll get this thing washed and blocked and see how my mom likes it.

27 October 2012
Finally have photos of my mom wearing the sweater. She has 4 other shirts on underneath. Not sweaters, but shirts. 4. yes, FOUR. I think I should make another Alpine Meadow, this time in a Large to accommodate her habits of wearing multiple tops (and bottoms). She’s so cute! The sleeves are too long (next time I’ll follow the pattern’s instructions for 3/4 length, that will be regular length for her), and I won’t make the bottom quite so bell-shaped (i.e. as written in the pattern). Other than that, it is pretty darn cute on her!

18 April 2013
Sigh….this sweater went “missing” at the nursing home.