Sunday, June 6, 2010

Sunday: Knitting Disaster




So, in last September, I started knitting what looked to be the greatest sweater of all time. It involved cabled pinwheels, a slip-stitch cabled border, and three-quarter length sleeves. However, the pattern was weird, the sizing was off, I had to reknit it twice and rework the border. Suffice it to say that I have thought many nasty things about Vogue patterns and will have no choice but to return to being a Rowan junkie.

Anyway, the pattern knitted up way too large. The sizing was off, and I always had in the back of my head that I was going to felt the sweater. NOW, do you know what it means to felt a sweater. It means that you wash it in the washing machine and shrink the wool once the sweater has been knitted so that the sweater has a boiled wool quality. It can be amazing, and it can go terribly wrong. I am 75% sure that it went terribly wrong for me, BUT once you wash a felted piece you have to let it dry. The drying process takes a few days, so I won't know for sure for a while.

Anyway, I was hoping that the felting process would only take the sweater down a size or two, but it took the sweater down from an adult large to a toddler small as far as I can tell. There will be no way I can wear it, and I have to say that it is a mighty disappointing prospect after 9 months of work. Quite sad.

I will keep you posted, but prepare to hear that I am storing the felted disaster in hopes that some daughter or niece of the future can wear it. Bleh.

Pics of what the sweater looks like now and what the picture of what the pattern said it would look like.

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