File Under: Knitting Lessons I Learned The Hard Way

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Originally uploaded by Bad Hippie.

Check it out! An almost-completed "Very Berry" sweater modeled by Picasso. Looks pretty good, huh? Well...not exactly. For a first sweater, I sure picked a doozy...and it's kicking my hippie butt all over the place. Here's what I've learned from this sweater...and I have to admit, my reactions to the lessons have been less than zen.

The sweater started off rocky enough, with me not able to obtain gauge with the specified yarn. No problem...I solved that by holding two strands of yummy cranberry goodness together. So far, so good. I pretty much breezed through the back and the front panels of the sweater - even the V-neck, which was terra incognito for me. But then I got to the SLEEVES. Yup, the sleeves. Oh, boy. Now we can start talking about the knitting fun!

Before casting on for the sleeves, I double-checked my needles...US 8 circulars, no problem! US 10s. Good. Everything checked out. So, I cast on and started knitting, happily joining my stitches and knitting in the round.

Warning: I STARTED KNITTING SLEEVES IN THE ROUND. Are the alarm bells going off in your head yet, dear readers?



After laboring over the sleeve for a week, I proudly packed my knitting bag and took off for my weekend knitting class. Imagine my surprise when my knitting instructor revealed this little gem of wisdom: sleeves should be knit FLAT and then sewn up at the seams. What? Are you kidding me? The pattern didn't specify that!

Fortunately, my knitting instructor is a genius. She was able to save the majority of my sleeve and modify the pattern to incorporate my "goof." We ripped out five inches of sleeve and made a new plan of attack, but she wasn't done dropping bombs on me yet...oh no, not by a long shot.

This story just gets better and better, doesn't it?

While cruising through blogland, I had read that sewing up side seams was a difficult and rather despised task. I decided to start practicing my seaming technique at a previous knit meet, and got so into it that I finished up both sides of the sweater before I knew it. No problem, right? WRONG.



Lesson number two: sweaters that are sewn flat are seamed AFTER the sleeves are attached.

Okay, folks. I obviously picked a sweater pattern that was a little out of my league for a first-time knit. I think a lot of the stuff that would have been obvious to a more seasoned pro was lost on me - hence this boondoggle of a mess. Hours and hours of work, all for naught...or so I thought.

Lesson number three: no project is a lost cause. As long as you can fix (or have friends who can fix) your mistakes, a project can be saved. As my genius of a knitting instructor likes to say, a mistake isn't a mistake...it's a design element.