Today, I thought I'd talk about a project which was on the needles for quite some time, my Classic Elite '03 Tweed Neck Down Shaped Cardigan (scroll down to see pattern pic). After several attempts with this project, I had to put the needles down and declare defeat.
I started this project sometime in January of this year. Thinking it would be an easy knit, lots of stockinette and oh, yeah, I have to pay attention to the seed stitch. The thing is, this is a simple project and one that should have been a success story.
The great tragedy with this knit, was not with the pattern, but complete and simple user error. This knit turned out to get a lot of play when I was on the telephone at work in the busy, busy months of call center world in January/February. During one of those days, in between phone calls, I somehow managed to select the wrong count (in a multi-sized pattern) for the sleeves/body. Somehow I believe, I was knitting one size for the body and a different one for the sleeves, but not bigger/smaller, i.e. bigger for chest area and smaller for sleeves, but the opposite. The body fit was good, however, the stitch count for sleeves was just off.
As you can see in the pictures below, the first two pictures show the left sleeve, which was the first sleeve I worked. After I finished it and was about to start the second one, I tried it on and a had a lot of bulk under the arm. Didn't really like how that worked and looked at it again and again and had my expert friend (Susan)take a look. She and the LYS owner both agreed I had picked up too many stitches.
They advised of how many stitches I should pick up and ignore the pattern. I tried that suggestion, cruised along, took it by for a look-see and no, I had a different bulge under my arm this time on the right sleeve. Some referred to it as a goiter(that would be the bottom two pictures here. And please ignore my bathroom shots while in my pjs. It was either with pjs or no pictures and no pictures = no post, so there you have it.
I tried once more and I still had bulges, in all the wrong places, and finally I admitted defeat. For, you see, I was knitting a top-down raglan, and to get those sleeves corrected, I'd have to at least rip back to the armholes and probably a bit before that, to get back on the right track. While I do like this pattern and expect that I'll try it again, now is not that time.
This project has been ripped and the yarn is awaiting another time on the needles. I guess the best thing is that I'm getting a lot of knitting enjoyment out of this yarn, right? ;-)
'Til next time . . .
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