Tamssmat

I’ve been branching out in my knitting lately and finally attacked the ever feared sweater.  The pattern I chose was very simple but included intarsia and following a graph pattern.  This is something that is, much like the socks, intimidating until you try it. 

Now the truth of it is, I didn’t do it right.  I am wearing said sweater today because I was so excited last night when I finished it that I decided I had to wear it out today.  To anyone that knits, this will be moderately interesting, to the rest of you, give up now. 

The sweater is too small.  This is because of a couple of different things.  1. I had to adjust the pattern slightly to fit with the much cheaper yarn that I bought.  I can’t afford the yarn the pattern calls for and there isn’t really a bargain substitute so I bought something as close to as I could find.  2. I kept holding it up to myself in progress and saying, “this is really long!” to whoever was nearby.  Turns out, I should have just followed the pattern there.

In further review of the definition of intarsia (see this link), I strung my yarn along behind my work and in true intarsia, you don’t do that.  This caused my picture on my sleeves to bunch up a bit. 

Overall, I completed my very first sweater and there is a picture on each sleeve.  So what if it’s not right and doesn’t fit!!  I’ve figured out that I can just pop the seams and add a few stitches here and there to make it fit.  I also think I can snip the yarn strung along the back and fix that too.  We’ll see if it works!!  I am not yet discouraged.  I have another short sleeved summer sweater pattern that I hope to tackle next.  It calls for smaller needles than I have and it’ll be a few days before I can aquire them, maybe longer.  I might have to order them online.  My local yarn stores seem to be slowly letting their needle supply wane.  I hate them.  I digress.

By the way, I’m smoke free x4 weeks as of today!!  HOORAY!!