7/7 - It’s taken me forever to get this project started. I spent the 4th and 5th doing gauge swatches to figure out what needle size I needed to use. I started by doing stockinette. I went from a size 6 to a size 5 to a size 4. The 5 still had one stitch too few, the 4 had 1.5 stitches too many. So I decided to do the pattern swatch to help make my final decision. Size 4? Too small. Size 5? Too small. Size 6 - perfect. How on earth is it that the first needle size I ruled out winds up being the one I need?

I finally cast on tonight, and already I’m at a standstill. The pattern instructions are HORRIBLY confusing in the beginning for how the increases are supposed to be incorporated. I reread the following sentence 9 times.

Inc at neck edges every 6(6, 6, 6, 4, 4, 4) rows, at front/back side of markers every 3(3, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2) and -(-, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5) rows and at sleeve side of markers every 4(4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 3)rows.

Bwazahunh? Considering the fact that it’s never indicated which stitch markers are the “sleeve side” and that I have NO idea what she means by front/back side of markers, this is a pretty confusing sentence. Given all the issues I had with Little Birds and my regret that I hadn’t searched harder to see how other people coped with the problems, I was ready to throw in the towel if other people didn’t have helpful notes. Luckily, I’m not the only one that found this description confusing and according to other people’s project notes, if I just follow the charts, they have all the increases and decreases in just the right spots. Hopefully this is the case. Tomorrow, I’ll print this out and be able to combine the charts to make my life easier.

8/8/10 - Crap. Crap crap crap. I’ve been working on the Catalina cardigan a good part of the day, probably 5 or 6 hours or so. About an hour ago, I realized that at some point, I had started doing the charts all wrong - instead of reading right to left on the Right side and left to right on the Wrong side, I was reading right to left on BOTH sides. I tried for awhile to figure out when I had started making that mistake because I know that I was doing it correctly at the beginning, but I just couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Finally, I decided to just rip back to the cast-on and start over which killed me because I was exactly halfway through the yoke. Argh.

So I rip back and start really paying attention and have a sudden notion that maybe I wasn’t doing it wrong, maybe I’d been doing the increases in the right spots the whole way through. For about 10 seconds I wanted to kick myself for ripping it back without being certain - then I discovered I’d been making an even BIGGER mistake. Much bigger. Instead of working it in this order:
Right side - Left front, sleeve, back, sleeve, right front
Wrong side - Right front, sleeve, back, sleeve, left front…
….I was working it:
Right side - Left front, sleeve, back, sleeve, right front
Wrong side - Left front, sleeve, back, sleeve, right front

Jesus Christ on a crutch, it’s no WONDER I kept looking at the front panels and thinking the lace stitch was coming out all “wonky” - none of the stitches were in the right PLACE!!! I mean, it’s mostly purls, but I could tell that there was something way off with the increases because instead of having a straight edge, it looked all flowy, like a river.

It’s a good thing I ripped back and started over because I don’t think I ever would have figured out my mistake otherwise! As my dad was saying last night (not to me, mind you) “Maybe you should make sure you’re being the right kind of stupid.” On the plus side, now I understand those really confusing instructions from the beginning about the increases…

8/22/10 - I’ve just joined together the sweater under the arms - yay! It actually took me awhile, I kept making mistakes. I got a bit confused by the instructions “Work as set…for 76 more rows” - to me, the more indicates that the 76 rows are in addition to the initial 2 that set up the way the sweater was worked. So I thought that I should be splitting the sweater at row 81, thanks to the additional rows worked evenly. I was wrong wrong wrong, so I had to rip back. Then, even though I had ripped back, I still was missing 2 stitches - again I’m sure it was my fault. For some reason, reading the actual print of this pattern has been confusing for me. I knit an extra inch past where the split happened, but it definitely doesn’t come down far enough. I think an extra 2 inches might do it. I’m just so excited to be working on this sweater and feel like it might be finished at some point!!!

9/9/10 - SIIIGGGGHHHHH.

I’m just so excited to be working on this sweater and feel like it might be finished at some point!!!

Yeah. Right. I bound off the body on Monday, tried it on and suddenly discovered - it doesn’t fit. Too big. TOO BIG. I would need boobs the size of cannonballs for this to fit on me. Since it’s top-down - which I thought was supposed to make these kinds of issues obsolete - I need to completely rip it back and start over. Plus, the pretty band around the middle pooches out for some reason and according to my mother’s opinion is too busy. It’s a shame - that’s my favourite part of the original design. So I might just go from the flame pattern to the ribbed pattern…I dunno.
Why don’t I just stick with scarves?

11/18 - I frogged this a few weeks ago and soaked the yarn. As soon as I can tear myself away from my other projects, I’ll figure out how to adjust the sizing for this one and make it work. I took an AMAZING sweater workshop with the Anne Hanson and now I understand how things should fall on me a little better so I’m sure I can get it right this time.

4/16/11 - This is back in progress as of tonight. I have cast back on for one of the smaller sizes. As of right now, I’m not sure whether I’ll be doing a small or an extra small. The good thing is that I don’t need to decide until it hits the point to make the split for the armholes. So at that point, I’ll string it up, try it on, and see where I’m at. I’m in such a finishing mode these days - I want all of my projects to be DONE, to be able to start brand new ones finally. But during knitting group I got tired of working on my mittens and didn’t really want to do more with my socks. When I got home tonight, I soaked my Sylvi in hot water - my first step in trying to repair the damage that was done to it. It’s soaking on the floor…until it’s dry, I really just won’t know what the next step is. I was too anxious and antsy about it to focus, so I decided that I needed a whole new sweater to begin, just to prove that not all sweaters are ruined for me. Funny that I would pick this one, since I had such size issues, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot in the last few days. It’s that point in the season where it’s about to turn but is still cold. Pretty soon, I’ll be wanting a cardigan exactly like this one to layer on top of my tanks and sun dresses. I’m praying that it will turn out well this time…and that my Sylvi is not ruined.
I must say, I’m really excited to be working on this one again, I really love doing a top down for the first time ever and seeing it kind of come together. However, I still hate the charts. They are SO DIFFICULT to read because no matter which size you’re doing, you’re looking at 4 separate charts. Given how many pages this pattern takes up, I feel like it would have made much more sense to do an individual chart for each size. I think it would save people who are working this project a LOT of frustration going back and forth, back and forth. Heck, the XS & S, M & L, and XLs are all grouped together anyway. The only difference comes in with the number of stitches, where the armhole split happens, etc. It would have been so much easier to have one completed chart for XS & S with a note to be mindful of where the divisions happen and all that. I know it can get confusing when charts have too many sizes clumped onto one page with only little lines trying to indicate where the different things happen from one size to the next, so I appreciate her not doing it that way, but it could definitely be done a little better.

5/1 - How bizarre is it that on the 8th anniversary of the “Mission Accomplished” (pretend those quotation marks are being sarcastic, please), Bin Laden is finally killed? I keep hearing John Locke from LOST whispering all these things about fate into my ear….
Anyway, enough of that - apparently, I am making this sweater in an X-small size, which I find hard to believe, but that’s what’s happening. I went as far as I needed to go on the first set of charts to decide - did I want this to be an X-small or a small? The small would have continued for 13 more rows before splitting for the armholes and would have had an extra 20-some stitches. The X-small continues straight for 8 more rows, then splits for for the armholes. I strung it up, took it off the needle, and tried it on. It fits perfectly right now. I’m kind of amazed that I didn’t see how big it was when I was doing the medium size, but it’s been so long that it’s hard for me to remember what that process was when I was working on it. I’m somehow 4 stitches short - this is exactly the point where I had difficulty with the number of stitches the first time I made it. I’m going to solve that by just casting on 4 extra stitches by the armholes when it comes time to put those on stitch holders, the same as I would do if I were making one of the larger sizes. Really, I just don’t think this pattern is well written. I’m not saying there are errors in it, because I don’t think that there are, but it really needs some serious editing to make it easier to follow.
I so wish I didn’t have to go to work tomorrow. I just want to stay home and work on this all day, you know? It’s definitely become one of THOSE projects that just excites me and makes me want to go go go with it so that I can be finished and WEARING it.
Plus - plus plus plus - I am really starting to do WELL with clearing out all of my WIPs! I haven’t cast on anything since mid-February, when I cast on for my Jaywalker socks to try to get a pair finished before the end of the month for my self-imposed sock club. (I failed.) I keep looking at the stuff I’ve finished and thinking, “Not bad at all - let’s keep going!” Right now, I have 6 things marked as “in progress” on my Project page. I think that I can finish 5 of those this month, I really do. Maybe I could finish that 6th - it’s just a seed stitch cowl - but I need to start it over again on bigger needles, probably, and it’s been languishing for awhile without me touching it, so we’ll see. Plus, one of those projects might actually be 2 - it’s the hummingbird hat I tried to make for my mother that was WAY TOO SMALL, so I still have that too small version that I will probably finish, as well as the one that will hopefully fit her! So potentially, I could finish half a dozen projects this month.

There are also half a dozen projects that I have marked as hibernating. All of those except for one I will probably pick up once I’m done with my current WIPs - one is a really heavy sweater which I might just let languish until late in the summer or early in the fall, when it actually gets cool again.

Seriously though, I keep looking in my knitting chest and going, “Wow…these drawers are actually starting to EMPTY.” It really excites me. I feel like things have been so stagnant - not just in my knitting, but in a lot of my life. No real forward momentum. This makes me feel good. This makes me feel like I’m actually getting somewhere.

5/21/11 - I stayed up until 3AM the other night finishing this. I got totally sucked into this project and the first season of The Good Wife, which is blowing my socks off. Plus, I thought I could finish this in an hour…one of these days I will learn that finishing things never takes just an hour.

As much as I liked this pattern and the result, it really was difficult to understand at some points. I had issues understanding the way that I was supposed to pick up the stitches for the button band. The whole “…beginning at bottom
right corner and working to front right
corner…” line just perplexed me. I mean, where is the front right corner exactly? It wasn’t very clear. I felt that it could have just said to pick up the stitches going along the front side until you hit the provisional cast on - but maybe that’s just me. I decided not to do a ribbed button band, I did a garter stitch one instead. It’s still not 100% done - I changed my mind on the buttons I was going to use to some that I just picked up because I thought they were pretty when I was at Fine Points. But all of the working up is done and when I get home from West Chester (and Cryssy’s wedding shower!) I’ll put on the buttons and block it. I am just so excited to be able to start wearing it and taking it with me to restaurants that have their air conditioning up too high.

3/17/13 - Today I actually did a little “fixing” on this sweater. I ripped out the bind-off and redid it with the Size 8 needles. It was just so tight - there’s so little stretch to this yarn, it was really foolish to cast off with the same size needles I had used for the rest of the project. I really think it hangs better now. The bottom actually has breathing room now, and I only had to add on a few more inches of yarn to complete it. I’ve been meaning to do this for ages on this sweater, I was just putting it off because I like knitting better than fixing things! But yesterday and today I did a bunch of fixing on little projects, and now I can wear it without thinking, “Darn it, why didn’t I just fix that to start with?”