Some Things Aren't as Awesome as They Seem

Recently, I was asked to identify a knitting project that I was well-admired by others, but that I found disappointing.  It took a little thought - for the most part, the projects that get admiration are well-loved by me, too.  I'm probably even saying "LOOK HOW AWESOME MY SCARF IS!"  But they haven't all been successes, and some projects are surprisingly sneaky in how evil the really are.

Old pic is old.  Sriuz face is sriuz.

I already know what you're thinking.  No you can't have it.  If I gave it to you you would wonder what you did to make me punish you so badly, plus it's not mine to give away, since I threw it at the back of a donation truck and jumped in the bushes so they couldn't find me to give it back (they probably could have recognized me by my He-Man haircut, which is why I hid).  I dare not speak its name 3 times, lest it appear.

What's wrong with it?

1) It's riddled with errors, very few of which are my fault.  The pattern does a lot of assuming.  I don't mean that it assumes you know what you're doing.  That's a moot point.  It assumes IT knows what's it's doing as it has you "continue in pattern" even though things have CHANGED.  An obvious example of this is the cable - at the top it just stopped crossing, because I had decreased a lot of stitches and the cable was that entire panel.  Also note the yarn overs next to the button band.  They just end like a critically acclaimed yet poorly rated show on Fox (but I still wanted to watch that).

2) Bulky yarn and bulky sweaters don't hide ANYTHING.  The easiest way to make a bulky sweater even bulkier?  Seams.  Which this sweater totally has.  Please be sure to look at the seam around the sleeve and observe the bulk.  One smart decision I made?  Not putting on the front pockets, which sit right at your hips and make you look swollen.  This thing was also warmer than my Winter coat.  I live in California.

3) The yarn choice is at least partially my fault.  First of all it's pink (what was I thinking?), it's single ply so was one big rubby disaster waiting to happen, and it shed like a cat in Summer.  Due to my terrible color choice, this sweater looked best with a black shirt, which was officially a pink shirt by the end of the day, even if I just sat in the same room as the damn thing.  I don't want to think about how much of this sweater I inhaled.  I keep waiting for the daytime lawyer commercials to address it - "Do you, or someone you know, suffer from symptoms of sheddy bulky wooly sweaters?  Don't wait!  We can help!  Not valid in New York State."

I could go on, but I've gotten to a point where I really don't want to talk about it anymore; it's making my blood pressure rise and my teeth itchy.  Suffice it to say, all my projects haven't been perfect and bragworthy, all that sheds all over your stuff is not gold, and I hope some day I can forget this monstrosity.  To the person that picked it up in a charity shop - I'm so sorry.

Pre-Sweaters

I've been getting new goodies in the mail this week!

It all started with an ill-advised cold-turkey yarn diet.  My friends and family have come to know that when I declare "I'm not buying any yarn right now!", I literally mean that right now, at this very moment, I am not in the middle of the purchasing process for buying yarn.  In my mind I mean that I'm not increasing my stash at all until I knit the whole thing, but history has shown us that this hasn't happened even once, and the stash acquisition continues, usually in spectacular form after a drought.

I was doing very well, having not purchased any yarn since my visit to Stitches West in February, but suddenly the beast needed to be fed, and here I am showing you

SWEATER QUANTITIES!

This is slightly out of the ordinary for me!  If you go back to my Stitches post, you see what is my normal - single skeins of sock yarn or lace, perhaps 2 for a larger project or colorwork.  In fact, looking at my bank account this week, that would have been cheaper.  XD  But I'm excited about doing something a little different!

It started with a post on another blog, written by my friend Darcy.  Funny enough, I had been pondering the exact same thing that day, and had considered writing a post about it here, but she had beaten me to it (without us discussing it or anything)!  While I've made sweaters in the past, lately I've been sticking to projects that don't necessarily need to "fit" - mitts, shawlettes, etc.  I'm not at a weight that I'm particularly happy with, and thought of all the excuses to not make a sweater - I would lose weight and all that work would go to waste, it would look so much cuter on someone smaller than me, what if it doesn't fit, on and on.  But reading Darcy's post helped open my eyes that we all have excuses not to make a sweater, even though we all deserve one (yes, DESERVE).  So after starting a KAL/CAL called "You deserve a..." in our awesome little group on Ravelry, I decided that I would finally take the plunge on the Spring Garden Tee by Alana Dakos.  My friend Kate gave me this pattern last year for my birthday, and as we go in to Spring I think it's finally time I jump in!  I purchased some DK weight 100% silk in the colorway "Copper Penny" from Argosy Luxury Yarns, which is a color I have coveted for years.  So this "I deserve" moment was particularly indulgent and for the first time in a while, I'm actually really excited about casting on for a new sweater!

My other yarn comes to me by way of my friend Amber, who sadly recently discovered that she is allergic to alpaca.  It was one of those "sudden onset" type of things, so the alpaca she had been stashing for quite some time was suddenly a problem!  After properly sympathizing - "What?  Allergic to ALPACA??!  Oh noooooo, that's hoooooooorrible!" I later came back with "soooooo, whatcha gonna do with all that alpaca?"  Fortunately she accepted my offer of assistance, and I scored a sweater quantity of Ultra Alpaca in 3 shades of blue!  I have my mind on a stripey raglan pullover, we'll see if I can get that to work with the 3 colors I snagged.  I've worked with this yarn once before, making a cabled scarf.  I can be very picky about what yarn goes near my neck (it needs to be SOFT), and Ultra Alpaca fits that bill!

I uh, I may have one other sweater quantity coming in the mail, too.  Future me, if you're reading this: remember what yarn diets do to you!