Born to knit

Third Time Lucky

If anyone trying to follow this blog is wondering what I´ve been up to, the answer is: knitting sleeves.

Lots of them. 

When I attempted to sew up the brown cardigan, that is knit sideways, I noticed that the sleeves were too narrow. No fault of the pattern, the mistake was all mine. I´ve substituted the original yarn for a thinner one and not been overly careful with my calculations.

The new sleeves that I made fit nicely, but the cardigan still needs buttons that I´ve been too lazy to sew on.

Over to Ludvig´s new Dragon sweater. I started knitting that in the spring sometime, but was interrupted by a heat wave. 

But at this time of the year it´s getting chillier by the day and it was high time that I finished it.

You might think that I had learned my lesson by now and done the maths for these sleeves.

But it seems that I was either born an optimist or a complete idiot. Take your pick.

This is the first attempt to knit a sleeve.

As you can see it would have ended up much too wide if I had carried on knitting it like this.

So I decided to rip it and start again.

You might again think that I had learned my lesson this time. Once burnt, twice shy – you know.

But oh no. And I suspect that no one is hesitating to label me idiot by now.

Poor Ludvig was beginning to despair – and who could blaim him. He even asked me to teach him how to knit. He probably thought that he could do better than that botched up job that I was still insisting on calling his new Dragon sweater. And I´m in no position to argue with that.

If you find it tedious to read about it, just think about how tedious it must have been for me to rip that darn sleeve out once more and start again. But at least I did do my maths properly this time and there are now two sleeves that look just right. There will be pictures later to proove this. 

I must say that this experience has given me a whole new and deeper understanding of the saying: "history repeating itself". But just to prevent this from having even the slightest chance of happening again I´ve now started knitting something that is completely sleeveless – a pair of socks.

Yes, that is correct. A pair of socks. 

That shows just how close to the edge this sleeve-business has driven me. 

I can´t risk one more sleeve-mess or I´m sure that the men in white coats will come to take me away.

Hubris

Yup. What goes up must come down. 

I´m touching the ground again when I´m walking.

That pink lacy tunic turned out so well. 

A perfect fit – more luck than skill perhaps, but still...
So imagine my surprise and shock when I tried to fit the sleeves of the cardigan

that I´m knitting into the armholes and they were (gasp) too small.

Admittedly this can happen when you don´t use the yarn that the pattern was written for.
I guess I could have checked my gauge a bit more. 

Or I could have tried if  the first sleeve fit  when it was finished before I made the other one.

Instead I have to spend another week reknitting the sleeves 

and now I´m really itching to start something new!

This is from last week when I made it to the knit café at Hurtig´s for the first time in months.

Katarina was knitting a lovely scarf in autumn colours. 

Carin was making a celtic cabled sweater in beautiful brown. And Nicole, who turned up with some fabulous swatches for a future project, is modelling one of the sleeves that went wrong.

Luckily I´d paid a little visit to Maria´s garn the very same morning that I discovered that the sleeves were too small. So I had a little something to cheer me up.
Maybe some wouldn´t agree that eight  100 gram-skeins of Jamieson &Smith shetland yarn can be called a little something. And lying there on the window sill I must admit it looks like quite a lot of yarn.

But I see it as a very sound investment. 

I have no idea what the yarn index is right now, but I´m pretty sure it can´t have dropped as much as stocks, shares and property. Actually I do believe that yarn follow the same index as gold.

(And I did go to the School of Economics here in Stockholm for a whole semester back in 1985)

That´s probably why I picked such glorious and golden colours for my new autumn inspired sweater.

That I will start knitting the minute those boring brown garter stitch sleeves are done.