Project#4

Introduction:
I am writing this so my small world that I revolve in can see what it takes for Anna to knit something. In this case a sweater I am knitting for myself ..


December 30, 2007
This is how it all started. Above is a part of the ribbed back I redid 3 times. It was too tight. Now I feel like it's too small. We'll see what happens. The little yarn blob is tied together with the yarn from my mom's hat. This is what my teacher does to take care of trailing yarn left over from casting on. I am so unoriginal.

Jan 15, 2008
Instead of a new ball of yearn I managed to connect the bottom left over piece from the casting-on and knitted an entire row with it.That really deserves a photo of it's own because it's not something you see every day. Then I was given a pattern for one of the sides and managed to have the wrong amount of stitches and the wrong pattern. I thought I was past all that. The instructor informed me that she lost the photo we were using for this pattern. No comment. She did find some nice buttons for me which makes me happy even though the sweater does not. I just started the side again and undid it. I had a mistake in it, a pearl instead of a knit and did not really want to attempt at a fix.

Jan 17, 2008
I am not happy with the sweater. I think it's going to be unattractive and most importantly make me look unattractive. I cannot decide on a design and the fact that the original design photo is lost does not make things any better. I even went so far as to write info@sarah-pacini.com the dreaded designer of the sweater an email and got an unfavorable reply from someone named Maïté LIGOT. Due to my limited French I cannot tell if this is a name or some kind of a status identification. This is because Maite reminds me of Maitre d'. In any case I had never received an email from anyone who had several dots and apostrophe above his name. Of course being in a chronic bad mood I cannot resist posting the welcoming words of Maïté LIGOT. "Dear Ms. X" it began "It is with the grreatest interrest that I read your e-mail.." His interest was so "greatest" that it required not one but 2 whole Rs.
I started the side yesterday. The buttonhole section does not look good with the garter stitch. I hate the garter stitch in itself and the narrowing and widening qualities of the yarn make it look very bad. I pulled in the button hole section too much and as a result it is shorter then the side! I have to undo it tonight again. Because of all the undoing the yarn is beginning to look funny or should I say fuzzy. I made another pearl instead of a knit but this time I went down 4 rows and fixed it! I do not think I had ever done that before. I remember the instructor fixing a dropped stitch in my 2nd or 3rd class. I was like wow that's amazing. Anyways unhappy over this sweater. Feel like I don't want to do it anymore but then curious to see what if it works out. I have no idea how. The instructor is going to have to think of something and the quality depends on her mood at the time. To sum it up I have the back done which is so scrunched up because of the ribbing it looks like it can only fit a 5 year old and a side which I have to restart tonight. Great. What about the rest of my so-called life.

Jan 17, 2008 11:13 PM
I think I figured out how to unravel stitches. I am sure there is a term for this that I forgot. For the pearl you stick the needle underneath the "loop" and for the knit you go inside the loop. I could never get this technique. I suppose if I ever spent some time thinking about it I would have figured this out a lot sooner but I could not be bothered. After all I have so many other very important things to think abut.. NOT. Seriously this is the ultimate triumph. I used to unravel a row and then put every single stitch on backwards so when I knitted that row I had to turn every single stitch around. If that does not sound like a fun thing to do to you you are 100% correct. I did not redo the button hole. I had big plans of making it a seed stitch instead of a garter but left the garter.

Jan 18, 2008
The instructor found the photo. The sweater may be OK after all. I liked how we were going to do it. Loved it actually. Let's hope I will not make mistakes. I already tried to do the increase on the sleeves in the middle instead of on the edge.The conversations today were for the most part about diseases and someone's cats and a dog. I kept quiet for the most part and then started talking when I was really tired. Really tired for me mimics the effects of being drunk. I don't care what people think in that condition. I joined in with pet stories.

Jan 18 11:49 PM
I did half the sleeves. I managed to tie a thread from one to the ending thread of another and knit that. I had to undo 'that' which consisted of 2 rows. I hope to finish the sleeves by Monday so we can do the buttonhole side. I knitted all day. 10-3.. 4 to 11 with multiple breaks. I think I fell asleep once for a bit.I am going to try and go to sleep. Very tired.

Jan 19, 2008 11:30 PM
I did the rest of the sleeves today at my parents while watching Runaway Jury. I did try to knit the sleeves together again .. times three. I have 15 inches of the sleeves and I need 16 1/2. I should re-read the instructions because based on past experiences I need to do something totally different. Sometimes I feel like I read the instructions and then just do something else and am certain that I am carrying out the instructions. I am sure there is a term for this condition.

Sleeve Cuff:


I wish I had all the terminology down packed but unfortunately not yet. This is one of the sides .. the place where you saw on the buttons. That stitch is called "garter" I hate it and it looks even more ridiculous with this yarn but then I sort of trust my teacher or respect her choice I guess and she chose this. (This is actually an important line because I could not express what stopped me from totally unraveling this piece apart until now)




Braids. This is what I call the knit side. When I started knitting I consistently confused the terminology especially "knit" which is a type of stitch and "knitting" which is the act of. I think this is the "stockinette" stitch which really should not be called a stitch because it's just basic knitting. I just realized I am "fuzzy" on what is a stitch and what is a pattern. I am going to guess and say that several stitches form a pattern? but I may be mistaken.


Silly as it is I am looking forward to Monday because we are going to start on the button holes. Hopefully it won't be like my last buttonhole event. The instructor had to redo each one after I "did" them. I just looked at the instructions and it does say knit until the sleeves reach 16 1/2 so maybe not all is hopeless after all. Sometimes I am amazed at the instructor's precision. She said to increase every 1 1/4 inch and 15 approximately was my last increase so in 1 1/4 inch I will be around 16 1/2. How did she know that .. I just tried to figure it out and I cannot. The cuff is 1 1/2 so 16 1/2 minus 1 1/2 minus 1 1/4 = 14 3/4 I think. Anyways forgot where I was going with this. Confused. But feel like one day everything will fall in into place.

Below are the sleeves once again with the corresponding balls of yarn. The yarn actually proved to be quite photogenic.


Blogs make me feel very detached. To be continued ..

January 20, 2008
I am done with the sleeves. At least I think I am. I will know tomorrow. I did an extra row on one so it can be exactly 16 1/2 and the other one is a little less. The teacher can decide how long they should be. She'll probably be annoyed that one is longer but it comes with the territory. I still do not like the back and the side. I do not like the ribbing. I think the non-stitch stockinette looks better with this crazy yarn.

January 21, 2008
Buttonholes did not happen today. I got instructions on how to do them half and hour before closing. Recap of what I did 10-2:30 today. Waited for an hour to be 'seen' There were a lot of people in the store today and they all came before me. Then I had to undo the back and decrease the sleeves. For some reason I thought decreasing the sleeves would be really hard and it was not. The back proved to be another story. I decreased too far and had to knit my way up. I confuse bind off and decrease on a regular basis so today was not any different. After realizing that I bound off on the right and decreased on the left I had to undo the row and then some more stuff happened because all I did was undo rows and then while knitting back up had to manually turn around each loop which was facing the wrong way. On Jan 17th I said I had the above all figured out but I was mistaken. When you start learning you keep going until there is a line you cross (or I cross) where I start making mistakes on things I already know how to do. I am not sure what that is called. But it's very strange when you are 100% sure that you are doing something correct and it's 100% wrong.
At first I was getting really really upset. After all this would have taken the teacher 5 minutes and she made no attempt to offer any assistance. Then I felt myself accepting my fate as I settled into undoing another row one by one and putting them on backwards one by one by one .. 'Accepting one's fate' is kind of an interesting feeling of realization, revelation and submission. I do not know when I had that last.
*01-22-08 I just remembered when I had it last. But that's a total other story and it does not involve any yarn.
4:32 PM
I am about to start on the buttonholes. There is nothing more exciting then having an assignment that makes you curious to see what becomes of it. I never did them by myself. Interesting to see if I can. Buttonholes: K1, K1, K2 tog, YO, YO, K2 tog This is always done on the right side and on the wrong side you knit the 2 YOs through the back the old European way.
6:58 PM
I am done for the day. First I did the yarn over YO wrong although according to the knitwitch on youtube.com I didn't. Then I did the usual, knitted the wrong string in, had 11 knits instead of 10, something else.. I can't take it anymore.
11:24
I am overposting. Of course I could not leave the buttonholes alone. I think I figured it out. Not sure. Verification to follow. I did a whole one twice. The 1st time I did I did not like the edge. It is because I messed it up. So I undid it. Someone say 'correct sentence structure' I also casted on several times.. the usual.

January 22, 2008
Sat in the store 10:30 to 5:30 no food. Freezing my butt as usual. I don't think I mentioned this but the store is always freezing. 'Freezing' my butt is not even an expression. The chair I sit on is made out of metal. Anyways my button holes were correct. I went on to make 4 more of them and bound off the sides. Then the most amazing thing happened. We connected the side, sleeve, back, sleeve and side on one round needle. This means I had to knit each piece to the other. Very cool. The only problem is now the sweater is all one row so if you make a mistake you have to undo the 'side-sleeve-back-sleeve-and-side' vs just one side or one sleeve. Another danger is while knitting the parts together you can accidentally flip a piece to the 'wrong side' and then you have like the side on the right side knitted to a back on the wrong side or a sleeve on the wrong side. Hopefully you get the idea. At some point someone asked if I was making a cardigan and as a result it was discovered that I forgot a button hole. My teacher went in that big mess of sleeves and sides .. undid something and made a hole. I cannot do that .. maybe not ever. I did have a small episode when I reached the end of one row and had to do the next one. The thread I was using was on one side and the row I had to do next was on the other. It appeared that in order to continue I'd have to connect the two sides however we made buttonholes so the sweater can button and not be sewn shut. That much I knew. I am not sure how to relate this feeling. It's like walking and coming to a cliff with no way to get across when you were not expecting a cliff in the 1st place. I sat there trying to figure out what on earth did I do wrong until I heard someone next to me laughing. The teacher stuck up for me 'She has not used circular needles before' .. oh but I have on the hat except I used them there as a circle and here as flat needles. For those how did not get anything because at times I am a terrible story teller .. when you come to the end of a row you are able to go back on the same row on the opposite side. Since I only used circular needles before to knit a hat as a whole in a circle I wanted to keep going in the circle. The curious thing is when I was making the hat I could not get the circle and now I could not get the non-circle and I cannot seem to explain what happened no matter how hard I try. I give up. Anyways I am home with my connected at the top sweater. The sides are still not connected and the sleeves are not sewn together. I had to disconnect the 4 balls of yarn out of the 5 I was using and now threads are hanging from the 'side-sleeve-back-sleeve-and-side' like little threads of accomplishment. Don't anyone get me wrong .. I still have a million things to do.. the circle, the collar the dreaded sewing, buttons and the ironing plus the millions of mistakes I will make before I get the thing completed. But today I am happy. If even for one evening. Someone got complimented on a sweater today and they said that the teacher designed it. And then that same someone said that she loves everything the teacher designs. The teacher kind of laughed it off but I could see she was pleased.
9:19 PM
I am afraid to touch it. I have more instructions but the fear of making a mistake and then undoing a million loops one by one, putting them all backwards and then having to turn each one as you knit really does not look appealing. At least not right now.

January 23, 2008
I could not figure out the knitting instructions from yesterday all morning today and ended up putting a call in to my instructor at 7:15 AM. Something I have not done for a really long time or at least an entire January. We had a little falling out when I text messaged her something about binding off and she did not take it well. I will stop at that. In any case I thought, thought, thought about it and eventually understood what she wanted me to do. The entire process took an hour on the treadmill, some time in the shower and 6 hours at work intermittently (only because I had to think about work also) from 8 until about 1:56 PM. The instructor has not called me back. Apparently she does not feel like it or maybe the 7:15 AM did it. She probably thinks I went insane .. again. Anyway I am about to start knitting. I think I know what I am doing. We'll see. I am looking forward to it. A row with all the parts connected takes me about 40 minutes and I have to do 12 rows. I think that totals about 8 hours. I'd rather do that at home so that I can get more instructions when I come in on Friday.
7:06 PM
I thought I had everything figured out. The sleeves had no ribbing so I could make the ribbing anywhere I wanted and subsequently the pearl decrease anywhere I wanted. But the sleeves were on the knit side so I could not figure out where to pearl the decrease on them .. and then I realized I could do that on the pearl side of the rib. And then I thought I had 5 stitches on a cable on the back and I did not know what to do with the 5th stitch but then I realized there was no 5th stitch because the instructor figured it all out. She is a mathematical genius even thought at times she has terrible phone manners. She still did not call me back.
How do you spell pearl? I am beginning to think its purl. 7:12 PM It is purl! Let it be purl from now on. Pearl looks a lot nicer but no one bothered to ask me. 8:38 PM I don't know where to make the next buttonhole. Annoyed. 10:45 PM I don't like the sweater again. I do not think the garter stitch really broke up the ribbing and I don't like the ribbing all the way up. Not on this sweater with this yarn. Tired. Totally.

January 25th, 2008
10-3 knitted at the store. The button hole is in the wrong place but the instructor said she would not tell anyone. No comment. I just tried it on and it just may be adorable. I am not sure. It's hard to tell with all the parts not joined and hanging off the round needles all tangled up with yarn. Nothing really happened today. I mainly decreased the purl stitches 4-3 then 3-2 then 2-1 every other panel as she called it and the 2-1 on the other panel. Now I have 4 knit vs 1 purl. I am not sure how many rows I worked on today. I did not do exactly what she wanted but then maybe I did. She measured me twice today and I have to come in tomorrow so she can measure again. I am being measured every 3-4 rows which is kind of very exact. I overheard the instructor say a word I was not familiar with at all and then accidentally found it in my Vogue Knitting book. var·i·e·gat·ed: having patches of different colors: marked with or containing patches of different colors.This sweater is being made from variegated yarn and I did not even know. The weird puffy yearn I am using actually has a category.
It's funny but Tuesday and Wednesday I was so concerned about what to do and today I have no concerns and also nothing to do. I only have Monday and Tuesday to work on this..
Someone asked the instructor if she liked such and such a yarn and she said 'There is nothing in here I do not like ..' which was not obvious to me or this person until those words were said.

January 26th, 2008

10-1 knitted at the store again. I love my sweater. I cannot believe that I do but I do. Please do not get as excited as I am since it's not done. I decreased some more today and got remeasured, decreased, remeasured .. etc. Everything went smoothly. I'd finish, interrupt the instructor while she was helping someone else and she'd tell me what to do next. After a couple of hours I lost my ability to interrupt and then I could not get any directions for a little bit .. but then I resumed being rude and everything was OK once again.
I learned a new decrease today which I will document here. I was only told how to do it once which is like record breaking because in general I am shown something over and over, I do it a couple of times and then forget and have to be re-shown. Anyway here it is .. SL1 as if to knit, SL1 as if to knit, then slip the left needle through the front of the 2 slipped stitches on the right needle and knit them together. I got confused at first but then realized that after you have the 2 stitches on both needles and the yarn in back you have no choice but to knit the 2 since when you put the left needle through the the front of the two stitches on the right needle it's the same position as 'knit 2 together' Now I am going to be thinking about this all day since I have to figure out why we did not knit 2 together and had to slip them first and then look like we were about to pearl 2 together. I think I am going to document how to make a type of a button hole in the button making section of this post. Be right back.
At some point (a few minutes before closing) I asked if the instructor wanted to do anything else today and got an abrupt 'No' and then she added 'Because I have to think about it .. ' I liked that she said that. She is actually going to think about my sweater. Someone else will be thinking about it besides me. It's funny how people think about sweaters but in theory you can think about anything.
I was rushing to finish the row I was working on and made a mistake which I ended up going home with. I am going to have to fix it which requires undoing the 'way back' of the button hole which means knitting through the back of yarnovers the old European way. The mistake is bothering me now but I am too tired to undo. I am unfortunately too tired to take a decent photo. The holes are where the sleeves are supposed to be.. the sleeves are hanging nearby off the sides of the chair and the sides are next to the sleeves and the back is in the center. Chair .. compliments of IKEA 2000. They were impossible to put together.



Tired overmeasured sweater .. "Back View"

6:30 PM
I fixed the mistake. For some reason I thought I had to undo something but I do not. I just moved the stitches to another needle until the mistake point. The instructor does this all the time. I just did not think of it.
3:09 AM
I just came home and noticed I have blisters on both left and right index fingers from knitting. I remember telling the instructor that when I was still in the class and she said 'I have blisters from doing dishes' but I was like you have to do the dishes .. this is almost like self inflicting pain.

January 27th, 2008
Today is Sunday and I have nothing to do in terms in knitting and otherwise. I am going to blog my decrease in civil (non-knitting) language so I the civilian can read it later and know what it says here. Never mind. I tried and I cannot get the decrease equasion to equal at the end. I also cannot spell the word equasion. It has a "t" in it. My brain is wearing out due to inactivity and old age. It's 'equation' and even now that looks wrong to me. I've fallen victim to the typical non-native English speaker a.k.a. certain 1st grader phenomena where you write the word as you hear it. Anyway I really liked the decreasing every other panel although I feel like the ribbing looks weird because of it. I knit too slow. There is a way you can do it where you do not wrap the yarn around the needle but kind of 'take' it with a needle. I should really look at the videos..
7:05
PM I am wondering if I should try to describe the decrease again. I started with 4 knits, 4 purls and ended up with1 knit, 2 purls. So I got rid of 3 knits and 2 purls. All I rem is purling 2 purls together every other panel, working back the next row as is and then purling together the remaining 2 purls every other panel. Before that I rem knitting 2 together on each 4 knits rib. I rem that I knitted the 1st 2 and then thought maybe I should knit the middle 2.. anyways I am not sure how I wound up with 2 purl, 1 knit. I guess decrease can be anything as long as it's not sudden. I should pay more attention to what I am doing. I can learn more.


This is some yarn I took from the store. It has gold paint on it. If you do a close up it looks like tinsel. I did not like it at first but now see how it can be beautiful. Next to the yarn is something called a swatch. Someone made it to see what the yarn looks like and get the right gauge which is how many stitches wide, per inch, you knit with the yarn and needles you are using. I rewrote that explanation from www.knittinghelp.com


This is another yarn I took. It's kind of like my blue yarn for the sweater where the yarn goes from thick to thin except the puffy white is attached to a black string which at intervals binds the puffy yarn to the black string. This is kind of amazing. Who thinks up this stuff.. how is it made? That would make a nice documentary.

By the way that circular thing I raved about a week ago I think is called a yoke.

January 28th, 2008
I do not get sewing. I am upset and totally exhausted. I sewed the sleeve together today about a million times. The thread keeps coming apart which is weird. It seems like it is old or badly made. The instructor would not help not that I want her to. I want to learn this myself. She was sick. She said she is sick because people put needles in the mouth and then hand them to her. Why would anyone want to put a knitting needle in their mouth is beyond me. That is very gross. I admit sometimes I try to poke peoples' eyes with them and that's totally accidental.
I am so tired .. all I can see right now is the pink-b-lueg-r-een-purple 2 lines of yarn I am supposed to go under with the sewing needle and I can never find them. Otherwise the sweater is adorable. We did a short collar and did this weird decrease where you knit a purl and a knit together. I just have to try again.. but I cannot figure out what I am doing wrong. I cannot try again either. I over-tried again. I am just sitting here now .. disappointed in oneself. I told the instructor I was depressed and she said it's silly to get upset over things like this. I will not contest that it's silly but I am upset regardless.
After I was done and bound off the collar I saw a mistake. I did an extra garter stitch ie purled where I was supposed to knit. I showed the instructor thinking it was OK to keep and she made me undo it and fixed it. I am getting messy or careless.. or something or maybe when it's for myself I don't care as much. This is the 1st time I had to undo something after it was completed and off the knitting needles. A long time ago I thought I could never handle something like this .. but today it did not seem like a big deal. Maybe because to get to the mistake I had to unbind 7 stitches.

January 29, 2008
Done!
I did sewing several times over and all were a B-grade job on the average. The beautiful buttons cost me $40 and I am afraid they will fall off I was in such a rush to get them on .. but done. It's beautiful. My instructor is amazing:) I got yarn for project#5.

PS. The buttons are falling off. I have to reinforce them. That means I am going to have to get my very own sewing needle and purplish-blue thread. Good luck to me finding the correct thread color. Now I am worried about the buttons .. they were super expensive. I really do not want them falling anyplace. I guess this is something new I have to deal with .. life after the project. I have seen people come in before and say that they needed something stretched out because it did not fit well.. someone complained that the sweater was too short.. etc. Someone did not like the buttons because they chose them in a rush.. why should I be any different.
I am not sure what made me start knitting and why I have not stopped yet but today I feel like I am quite through with it yet.

11:53 PM I put the sweater in a drawer.

February 2,2008
Post scriptum...
I am finally home during the day so I took some photos and of course had to post most of them because I cannot post just one.

This is the back. I like this one because the light is going through the yoke in the back. I keep trying to write yolk and in egg instead of yoke. Very funny.

This is the between the ribs part .. the purl space.


I like this photo because it almost looks human .. to me at least after knitting nonstop for a month. If you look at the bottom button you can see the thread coming out of my not-so-excellent button sewing job. I am dreading re-sewement.


I like this photo also. Also human.. as if about to go someplace after buttoning that button. I think I am losing my mind.

This one is here because I did not think I posted enough photos of the same thing.

This line is the garter stitch separating the yoke form the sweater.. or more like making it more noticeable.

This was just a good detail photo.. or so I think. For some reason the camera cannot capture the button beauty. The buttons are pink and blue glistening or glittering like the inside of an oyster shell and reminded me today of clouds in the morning which were pink-blue-red. They look like that when the sun is setting but I guess they had this appearance when it was rising ..

This is the entire thing. For some reason I take better photos of fragments and I cannot seem to capture the essence of the whole thing. Yes. I know. I am killing the shoulders with that hanger! I had no choice. It's not like this has posing capabilities.