Today, I wore my new cardigan for the first time.  I finished sewing in the buttons just yesterday.  I have not even had a chance to photograph it yet.  And this happened:

I am so mad!

Maybe this cardigan is jinxed.

I have been using a backpack since I sprained my ankle, at first because of the cane, and then because it balanced the weight.  I was pulling the backpack up over my shoulders and the buckle caught on the back of the cardigan.  Argh!

This is remarkably similar to another recent sweater disaster, this time to my Acer cardigan:

In this case, I was rushing to an important meeting and trying to juggle a heavy briefcase and a shoulder bag.  The sweater got caught on the straps of my bag and I gave it a bit of a tug to free it, and rip!  Even worse, I didn’t notice it until after the meeting.

Doug says that the solution is for me to have a besotted young man who wants to carry my books for me.  I think this is unlikely.

I am feeling a bit down.  Perhaps a glass of wine and The Good Place will help?

I have finished my lovely Sparkling cardigan, except for weaving in the ends and sewing on the buttons.  I don’t have any modelled photos for you today, but I can tell you that it fits perfectly and is so comfortable.  I just love this one.

I had to re-do the front edging four (!) times, as follows:

1st attempt – picked up 307 stitches, US2 needle, buttonholes on row 5
2nd attempt – ripped back to row 2, buttonholes on row 3
3rd attempt – ripped back to row 1, changed to US3
4th attempt – ripped all the way back, picked up 371 stitches, US2

On the first attempt, I put the buttonholes on row 5 of the ribbing and this made the ribbed edge too wide; I wanted it narrow to match the ribbing at the sleeves.  Thus, the second attempt which merely ripped back to the beginning of Row 3 so that I could make the buttonholes on the correct row.  However, as I mentioned in a previous post, the edging was “bunched”, so I decided to rip back to the first row of edging and then change to a larger needle size (only because I was too lazy to pick up the stitches again).  This was a fail.  Thus, attempt 4, in which I ripped all the way back and re-picked up the stitches at a different rate, ending up with 64 more stitches on the needle, and then knitted the rib as intended with the smaller needle (US2).  So far, so good, one might think.

Imagine my surprise at discovering that I had knitted the buttonholes on the wrong side!  (I even knitted them on the wrong side FOUR TIMES)!  I spent a few days cogitating on this debacle and trying to convince myself that I didn’t care what side the buttons were on.

I finally decided to mention the problem to Doug, knowing that he would tell me how silly this was and that I should just sew on the buttons and wear the thing! But Doug said: “Oh no!  You put the buttonholes on the wrong side? How did you manage that?”  Epic fail.  If Doug thinks I should rip, when he is always in favor of not ripping, this is bad.

At just that point in the conversation, Emma calls, and I tell her that I have put the buttonholes on the wrong side.  And Emma says: “Do you mean to tell me that you care about some antiquated prescriptive clothing rules?  Do you mean to perpetuate non-essential gendering of clothing?”  Uh-oh.  EMMA, the queen of “rip it all out Mom” is telling me to let it be, while DOUG, “Mr. let it ride” is telling me to fix it.  Not only that, but I have strayed into political hot water.

We then have the following conversation:

Emma: “Historically, women’s shirts have the buttons on the wrong side, because it was assumed that women would not be dressing themselves.  And that doesn’t mean a man, but rather that a maid would be un-dressing her. It was a class thing.”

Kelly (doggedly sticking to her dilemma): “So, does that mean that you think I should re-do it?”

Doug: “No, that means that you should get a maid.”

Argh!  I’m left-handed anyway!  If things made sense, the buttons would alternate sides depending on handedness and not gender.

What do you think?  Fifth’s time the charm?

For a while I was steaming along on my newest project, Sparkling.  I managed to finish the back and knit both fronts:

And then I got stalled.  There are a number of reasons for this.  First, as I reported before, I am having troubles with my shoulders and back and this has meant less knitting.  I have a great physiotherapist and have started pilates as well and I hope to get that problem sorted soon.

The second problem is with the project itself.  I talk a lot in here about how important it is to knit to your measurements and not blindly follow the pattern.  Also, about the importance of knitting a swatch and then (perhaps even more importantly) paying attention to what the swatch is telling you.  I should perhaps practice as I preach: I kept merrily knitting away on this, even though I had a few niggling doubts.

My swatch clearly gave me a gauge of 23 x 48 in the bubble stitch.  The pattern calls for a gauge of 23 x 52-60 (yes, that’s what it says!).  There must be a great deal of variation in how much the bubble stitch compresses the row gauge between knitters.  Anyway, I didn’t think about the row gauge as I made the decreases for the arms and for the V-neck, and that affects the slope.  It also means that the armscythes are quite deep as I was counting rows rather than inches; they are a good 9.5″ deep unblocked.

If the only problem was that the armscythes were too deep, I could just pull out a few rows at the top of each piece (because this is knit bottom-up).  However, I am also worried that there are too many stitches decreased at the arms and at too long a slope.  Just look at the above photo: it doesn’t look right to me.  The shoulder is too narrow and the armhole keeps getting wider and wider.  The annoying thing is that this was bothering me the whole time I was knitting, and yet I never stopped to think things through.  Also, I never went back and checked the pattern or the photos.  I realise now that in my head the sleeve was shaped a bit differently than in the pattern photo (for one thing I thought it had wide ¾ sleeves) and so I was ignoring the voice in my head because I also had a false picture of the sweater to go with it.

So, the question now is: what to do?  Do I painfully rip back to the beginning of the armholes and re-knit the top portions, or do I blaze on ahead and put my faith in blocking?  Or do I just rip back a few rows to adjust the length of the armscythe and not worry about the width of the shoulder?  Also, do I knit the sleeves as written, or do I go with the picture in my head?  I started one sleeve but it feels pretty narrow, so maybe a re-think is in order in any case.  Until I decide I am stalled.

I must say that the situation isn’t as bad as it sounds.  It could still be that it is just my head messing with me.  What I need to do is take out my tape measure and carefully make measurements and spend some time thinking about the shape and construction of the sleeves and armscythes.  I plan to pull out Shirley Paden’s book Knitwear Design Workshop, and look at her algorithms for sleeve and armhole shapings and then make some comparisons.  This takes concentration, however, and I have been more in the knitting-blindly-along and not in the think-about-what-you-are-doing mode of knitting lately.

Regardless of what I decide, I must say that this fabric is gorgeous!  I just love it!  It is so light and fluffy, and it has great texture.  I love both the inside and the outside of the fabric (you can see both in this close-up of the v-neck shaping):

I am having trouble with WordPress today, and with my laptop as well.  I have now written this post at least 5 times, and used three different browsers and two laptops.  I am ready to throw my hands up in the air about now and declare defeat.  Clearly my knitting is not the only thing that has stalled.

I hope that your knitting (and everything else) is not stalled and that you are enjoying a peaceful Sunday!