How to Scare People with Your Knitting

While I was on my blog hiatus, I was spending time with family. John came to visit and dutifully brought me a cardigan and a hoodie like I asked him to (the weather changed after the first week!). He brought me my favorite hoodie and a hand-knit sweater he has definitely never seen me wear (in his defense, it was within easy reach and I didn't specify which cardigan to bring).

There is a reason  he's never seen me wear it: it doesn't fit right. I was still a bit of a fledgling knitter, just starting to modify things and not really that great with gauge. I made the sleeves on this sweater much longer than called for and eliminated a stockinette portion on the underside of the sleeves to make the lace continue all the way around. Well, that stockinette portion was vital to the fit of the sleeve and this cardigan would ever after fit too tightly around the arm and armscye.

Since he had brought it, I needed something to do, and it was on my list of things to fix anyway, I decided to detach the arms and unravel them while I conversed with family at the dining room table before dinner one night. The horror went in a wave around the table and entered and exited the room as others wandered in and out.

Assurances that I wasn't taking the whole thing apart calmed everyone a little bit. They were still really nervous about the sleeves, though. :) All that work! It was so pretty! Well, yeah, sure, but it has also been crumpled up in the closet for years and years because I can't do anything but look at it! It's worth the effort taking it apart to get it right and finally use it, yeah?

The plan is to reknit the sleeves to the pattern specs. Making them shorter will ensure that I won't run out of yarn this time. I shouldn't have to sew the sleeves on with other yarn like before. :) It should be a quick, easy, satisfying project when I get around to washing the unraveled yarn. It's such a pretty blue, it has pained me all this time not to be able to show it off!

Have you ever frogged something that wasn't working for you? Maybe only part of something, like my sleeves? How did you feel about it? I'm really complacent about it, but it's because I'm a process knitter and don't need much time to work up big projects. I can understand that others definitely need to shed a tear over long labors of love that just don't work. Tell me a story so my family doesn't think I'm so strange (at least when it comes to this!). :)