Monday, October 01, 2007

Practice makes perfect!

I started making a baby sweater for a friend of mine who was expecting her first child. I was making good progress, and thought for sure I would have it done in time for her baby shower. Well as I was folding it up after weaving in all the loose ends, and sewing up the sides, I realized that it was 2 inches shorter than it was supposed to be. Stupid guage! So I added some more ribbing onto the bottom to save it. Then just as I was feeling a sence of relief and satisfaction for having completed the sweater on time, I noticed that one sleeve was much wider than the other.

So my poor friend received only this picture of the sweater at her shower, as I proceeded to rip out most of it and recalculate the measurements of the sweater.

The sweater is from Debbie Bliss' book - Special knits, and is the ribbed sweater seen on the cover. My main beef with this pattern is that she only gives you the number of rows to knit, and not how long it should measure. These simple measurements would have saved me a lot of work, because my guage appeared to be alright, but I guess my row count was just a little too far off! The only modification I made was to add a button hole, as the picture just seems to have a broach pinned on it. I don't think my friend wants her baby stabbed by accident!


I also had almost 2 balls of wool left over from what she recommended, so I knit my friend's little girl a cabled hat from Cable's Untangles by Melissa Leapmen. I was quite pleased that I was able to figure out the modifications to make the hat for a baby from the adult pattern. It is just so cute. It appears to be about the right size for a one year old (been knitting for the future!), I figure it will fit her eventually.


I'll continue on with my Clessidra socks, the first one should be finished soon, the second one, well hopefuly I won't be aflicted with SSS. At the moment, though, I'm starting to develop a craving for sewing again. So many people are making great things out there!

Oh, I almost forgot, here is a picture of the socks I knit my mom for her birthday, though I'm not sure if she has even worn them yet. Grandma, you'll have to get after her for me! At least my puppy thinks they're delicious!



2 comments:

Montreal Mama said...

The sweater is super cute! I stumbled across your blog from Alison's (Brainylady).

NDG knit night is the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of every month at 2nd Cup on Monkland. What part of town do you live in? If you want more info you can email me at graphicdesignchick at hotmail dot com. I'd be glad to give you info!

I blog here: knitpurlknitpearl.blogspot.com and my shop is: www.robynsnest.ca (I do local pickup!)

Marji said...

Love your cabled socks (cassandra?).
And I hear you on Debbie Bliss not including schematics in her patterns. I've taken to spending the time to manually figure out what the measurements should be using the gauge and # of stitches and drawing my own schematics before starting, because, as I'm sure you've realized, her patterns, although stylish, are riddled with errors.
Darling baby set though.