I read about this once...

I finally read the Yarn Harlot's first book last week and cried with her when she tried to block her friend's superwash wool sweater, only to have it come out of the water twice as wide.

Well..... This has just happened to me and I'm devastated. I have been working on the Nantucket Jacket for a month or so now and finally put the buttons on yesterday. I tried it on and it was lovely, but I thought it could use a good blocking. So, I threw it in the washing machine as per the ball band instructions, but when I pulled it out to lay it flat, it was GIGANTIC. It grew far more width wise than it did length wise. I remembered that people had suggested to the yarn harlot that she should put it in the dryer, so I did that. It still looks bad...

I'm going to try to block it again today and stretch it down, but I don't have high hopes. If that doesn't work, I think I may just have to frog it. I know that I won't wear it this way.

I suppose it's all my fault, since I did do a gauge swatch, but I didn't wash it. If I had washed it like they say to, I would have known that it would stretch. I wonder if the designer had bothered to wash their swatch either. I already went down a size in needles to get gauge, but in order to adjust for the growth, I'm going to have to go down a lot of sizes. I love this yarn, and it took a lot of courage to buy the yarn. This is the most I have ever spent on a project, ever. *sigh*

Any one else had this problem?!

Almost There

4 1/2 of 5 pieces completed. Once I realized that I only had 1 more piece to go before this sweater would be done, you can barely tear me away from it! This last stretch just makes me itchy to get it done. At this point, I have the basic pattern stitch memorized. Once I do the setup row, my knitting tells me what to do, and I've got my handy dandy number chain counter to keep track of the repeats (cross the cable at 5).

I look forward to the seaming and the crochet and am seriously impatient that the second sleeve is taking so long. I know that some of you hate seaming and finishing. I actually don't mind it, as long as it's seaming. I'm not so fond of weaving in ends. Especially since they tend to worm their way out. Since this is a superwash merino, I think that I'm going to have to tack the few ends that I stupidly have in the middle of the piece with some matching thread. I have this unnatural aversion to wasting any yarn. It has taken me years to learn to leave more than a tiny tail when I start a new ball of yarn. This same aversion leads to obnoxious tails to be hidden in the middle of a piece of flat knitting. There is no knitterly logic for this shame, other than I can't really bring myself to leave a BIG long tail at the edge of the knitting where it belongs. "Maybe I'll make it across" I tell myself, even though I know I won't. Then when I inevitably don't, I don't want to tink back. Maybe it's because I think that if I don't use up every last bit of a ball that I won't have enough for the sweater. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense either since I DID buy a whole extra ball, and the next size up in the pattern calls for the same number of balls. I think by the end of this sweater I have finally convinced myself that my life would really be a whole lot easier if I leave the ends on the edge (where I can hide them in the seam) and that I WILL in fact have enough yarn.

I am a pretty good seamer, though. My pieces seem sturdy and the seams are pretty, so this part of the finishing has never worried me. I'm not fond of patterns that have lots of tiny lengths of things that need to be seamed (like darts). This breaks the rhythm and creates more ends to hide. I think, though, that after the bazillion sweaters I have taken apart by now that I have a feeling for how sweaters should be put together. Seam the shoulders. Sew the sleeve cap in. Seem the whole sweater from cuff to waistline. This is much easier than my random version of seam the shoulder and sides, then seam the sleeve, then try to fit one round object into another round hole.

I should have some finished object pictures soon! That is, assuming that DH will take more than one picture so that I have a CHANCE of getting a flattering one to post.