Enchanting your projects - Part II, a cardigan, Gauge and Stress

uuhhmm, yeah... College keeps taking more time than it should.... Here we go, from where we left it last time....


One of my aunts, an elderly lady, asked me to knit her a sweater ... TO ME ... I had never done anything like this in terms of complexity, or size, a sweater for me was one of those titanic projects that took months and miles of yarn to finish... Scared shitless as I was I didn't dare to say no, instead smiled and said "sure it'll be easy!" ... I spent hours looking for patterns in Ravelry, until I finally decided on Astral, mainly because it didn't seem particularly difficult, didn't had raglan sleeves - I find those horribly intimidating -  and used cotton, which is particularly easy to get here ...
Making this sweater, and doing it right,  was so important that I even did something that I almost never do: I knitted a swatch even though we all know that swatches are fucking liers, I was careful to maintain a good tension and to carefully wash and count the stitches... With yarn and needles in hand I started knitting. 


I did the back first, because I figured it would be the most annoying thing to do ..With each stitch I knitted, I kept thinking "she'll love it, she'll like it a lot, it'll look great, she won't stop smiling".

Now, I can boast of being a patient and persistent person - I mean, I'm a fucking knitter, you must have at least an ounce of patience in you to learn something like that, but as most people, I tend to get frustrated, I am also a bit cynical, and very foul-mouthed, in case you haven't noticed already... However with this project I really tried to keep my frustration levels to a minimum, and keeping that sort of mantra in mind when working on the sweater ...
All went well, I finished the back and the left front without many problems... When something terrible happened, a fucking college report, it was imminent and I freaked out completely, this essay sucked the light out of my soul -along with several days of sleep, thank you very much- but I kept knitting, like nothing happened, until it was time to make the armhole decreases, where for mystical and random reasons I compared the left front that was already finished and that fitted perfectly with the back, with the one I was knitting.

It was something like this...

The difference was simply abysmal, the right side that didn't passed from the armhole decreases was bigger than the entire left front... There was no way to solve this by blocking and stretching the left side, plus the resulting fabric on the right front was visibly softer and open. There was no other solution, I had to frog it.

While I groaned and ripped the evil front, I couldn't stop wondering "What the hell did I do? Where did I went wrong?" Until I remembered, I had been quite upset and worried last week while writting that essay... That was the only unusual thing that I could remember and that could've had an impact on my knitting. Stunned, and with a new respect - and hate- for the gauge I started again.


 I managed to finish the left front without much trouble - just a hand cramp that left me out of action for a week, but that's material for another post. I started the sleeves, 2AAT to keep my tension even from one piece to another.

I was done with all  the pieces, I blocked, seamed and ironed the cardigan, always trying to keep the mantra in mind...


When I gave it to my aunt, her reaction was something unbeatable. She had been depressed for some time for an injury she had, we were even beginning to fear the worst, but while seeing the cardigan her eyes lit up, and a huge smile crossed her face ... Its most likely that her joy was due to the fact that that cardigan was one of the few good things that had happened in a while, or simply was due to the surprise of a new gift, but I couldn't help thinking that wanting to do something nice for her, all the time, dedication and good mojo I tried to convey to the garment had really reached her... The idea that maybe something I had done, which was imbued with my feelings and good wishes, could give so much happiness to another person, really justified all the work and all the time I spent working on it...

I guess that a more experienced knitter, who read this will probably think "yes cutie pie, you just discovered the warm water"... But for me, this was the first project that rather than making me proud to say "I did this, bow down and worship me", it gave me the chance to say "I made someone else happy"...


In the next post -wich I'll do my best to get ready faster- I'll try to talk about the most "technical" part of the magical cardigan, my struggle with setting in sleeves and some awfull thing that happened while blocking the garment...


Btw- Don't miss the Knitting and Crochet Blog Week... It starts on Monday...If you have a blog, and are a knitter or crocheter, give it a ry, it looks fucking cool :D