Well, I almost had a sweater...

I made another sweater! Kind of.

So remember how I skipped the gauge and recommendation for my last sweater and it ended up way too small? Well, this time I skipped the recommended yarn again but I DID complete the gauge and I was like, "Oh, perfect. If I knit this a little loosely then I can totally make the gauge even though it's the wrong yarn weight."

So coincidentally I have a really hard time reading instructions because right there on the FIRST PAGE it states:

"If you achieve gauge by working an aran / worsted weight yarn at a looser tension, your owls will not have the same neat definition, and the shaping will not look its best."

See, generally fine looking partial owls.

I realized this about half way through the pattern and I decided it didn't matter. Really, I don't mind if it's a little hole-y and psh, I'm sure the owls will look fine. I did not convince myself however so I actually knitted up a separate little swatch with the owls and yes, they did look fine. So I kept on trucking.

You know what else the instructions said?

"k to underarm, between 15-19 inches"

GUESS WHO DIDN'T WANT TO GET A MEASURING TAPE

In case you can't tell since I'm wearing a dress, that stops exactly at smallest point of my waist. So it's very cropped which is cute but not my style. At all.

The boyfriend chimed in helpfully: "You know, you should really stop expecting to get things right on the first try. Just accept that you're going to have to re-do them several times."

Hmph.

At the very least, I now know that I can make a sweater and it will look beautiful. (Because even though I took this apart last night I really do love this!)

This sweater only took me about 2 weeks, which I thought was pretty fast, so hopefully in another 2 weeks I'll have something that actually fits.

Extensive research on ravelry tells me if I hold the yarn double, it will come out just fine and dandy so that's the plan.

Is anyone on instagram? Or rather, since I'm the last person ever to sign up: hey, I'm joining instagram! You can follow me here. It will mostly be pictures of sewing and my cats. Let me know if you're on there!

And in case anyone is interested, here's the pattern I'm attempting to make. (If you actually bother to read the instructions, they're quite outstanding. I've had no problem following along and that's usually a big challenge for me when I knit.)

And this, my lovelies, is why you should make a muslin...

I've finally found time to sew, and as a result, I've found some problems. A blessing in disguise, I suppose. I'm using a vintage Vogue 9810 for the top part of my dress, and I just knew it would cause problems. Well, I didn't know but I assumed because the drawings on the front aren't very flattering. They sort of look like aliens.

Anyway, I was going for view C which had a high neck and a high back. Instead of a zip, they suggest hook and eyes down the back, which is not practical in anyone's life. I was going to put a zip in the side just because I like side zips better, but therein caused all the problems: the neckline was so high, I couldn't get it over my head.

Way too high of a neckline!

I suppose I should back up and say that I had other problems as well. As I was putting in the interfacing, I found that it wasn't the right length. For once I cut it exactly so I'm not sure where the problem came in, but I didn't think anything about it. I just added another strip and sewed it up... which didn't work simply because the lining I'm using likes to fray. So the neckline had little bits of frayed thread where I added the strip. Not one to be deterred, I added some fray check glue and thought that would be that.

(I also tried adding text because I couldn't find an arrow to stick on there to point out my mistakes. Not sure I like the text though...)

Gaping hole in the middle!

Additional strap I laid on top.

...that causes fraying on the neckline.

But then after trying to fix the fraying, I realized the neckline was so high I couldn't fit it over my head. While trying to figure out how to adjust it, I realized that view A had a nice dip in the back (which they don't like to picture for some reason), and wouldn't that scoop look lovely on the front? Maybe?

Potentially the front?

Actually the new front. Maybe.

So I laid my new pattern pieces over my old pattern pieces and adjust the neck and shoulders and hacked into my old pattern pieces, which I actually find rather funny because cutting lace was so daunting before, but now I'm all, "WHERE ARE THE SCISSORS?"

So I adjusted it and now I can't decide which should be the front and which the back. Perhaps it will be reversible when I finally finish?

To make matters worse, I attempted to skip the interfacing step and just fold over the neck line half an inch. Big mistake. To be honest, it didn't look awful. Or rather, it could have been a look, a styling decision for the bold, whatever. Not really my style so I then unpicked the entire collar. Again.

So exhausted.

On the plus side, now I know not to skip steps or be lazy and I have a wearable garment since I can now get it over my head. I was also worried about putting in an invisible zipper because I was worried about having to unpick the zip through the lace (you know, in case I make a mistake), but I learned today that it's really not a big deal at all. I was hoping to make more progress on the dress today, but I feel like I'm exactly where I started. I'm packing it up for the day and will try again tomorrow!