Wednesday 11 May 2011

The Obligatory Projects

When you are pregnant, and people know you can knit, you get bombarded with questions about what you'll knit. People almost seem to expect you to knit baby things, conveniently forgetting that when you feel like I whale, and look like a whale, you want to beech yourself somewhere for 40 weeks (in my last case 42 weeks and 2 days...) and do nothing. This was me 2 days before giving birth to The Gremlin:

Link
That whale-like look was present the whole of my pregnancy (I went up to a size 16 maternity before having her - size 18/20 normal sized clothes and remained there for 2 months after!! I am normally a 12!).

I knitted one thing while pregnant, Elizabeth Zimmermans Baby Surprise Jacket. It took me 4 months to finish, which considering the Schoppel-Wolle Admiral yarn I chose split like mad when being knit was pretty good going for me!

Project notes can be found here. I knit it in newborn size, since I was due mid-October. Unbeknown to me, I would give birth to baby-whale, and at 9lbs 4oz, she got a few weeks wear out of it. 4 months work for 4 weeks wear. Imagine my disappointment, please! I also did a crappy job of seaming the arms.

Needing another cardigan that would fit her gigantic 1 month old body, I knit up Little Coffee Bean. I started this well, choosing 6 month size (see, learning through experience!). What I forgot was she was a baby whale, and my tension/gauge may well have changed since last knitting anything fitted. It had.

The fact it took me 6 weeks to complete didn't help the sizing issue, but we got a couple of months wear out of it, so +1 to me! Notes for this here. The ribbing on this was an epic failure.

After 2 medium-sized failures, I knew I couldn't give up, so with some amount of determination, I cast on for Bellas Mittens. Gorgeous pattern, and I had the perfect yarn for it. Where is the 'but' I hear you ask. Well, there is no but.

There is, however, a blaring 'should have done a gauge swatch for your abnormal sized hands you idiot'. It's not that they don't fit, because they quite clearly do (see above photo for evidence of this). It's just that the ladders show so badly, but thankfully only on the palms. I also messed up the ribbing on BOTH mittens. *head, meet wall*. Project notes here, but they really don't do justice to the pure frustration of knitting these.

You see, I have a 5 year long record of having never knit anything without mistakes. The closest I got was a hat that I'll show in another post, but I messed it up in the... *drumroll please*.................. RIBBING. Ribbing and I are not friends.

And that rounds up nicely the projects I knit because I felt like I had to. I did finish the projects mentioned previously. Well, Lizard Ridge is sitting at a proud 7 rectangles done, but I don't count that one. That's a life-long commitment type of project. If I had to choose between my husband or Lizard Ridge, for the rest of my life, some days I'm not sure who would win. Hemlock Ring came out beautifully, albeit with mistakes. The socks got frogged - they never made it passed the last photo. Chevron scarf got frogged because I didn't like it. I even started a jumper, but then got pregnant, it sat in a cupboard for 3 years, almost finished then I realised it was too small. So the yarn is being turned into something else, hopefully 'me' sized.

1 comment:

  1. lol, I'm a knew knitter but glad I'm not the only one mistake prone. my record so far is about 8 mistakes on one shrug!

    ReplyDelete

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