The Tricky Sweater Has a Trick

I'm sorry I missed posting yesterday. I was going to try to post every day for the first month of my blog, but I had to choose between finishing the tricky sweater, or blogging. I told you that that sweater is tricky. It always wins. 6 rows short of finishing, it dealt me a crushing blow. This is my first crew neck. I followed the pattern carefully. Well, at least as carefully as I am capable of following a pattern. Truth be told, the first go I had at the collar, was a wing job. But lets ignore that, and focus on my second, more earnest attempt. As I was saying, I followed the pattern carefully, but the collar is, how do I put this? The collar is limp. It looks like my husband got into a fourth grade style scrap and the other kid did a lot of collar pulling. Here's a picture of the gaping collar.





Sad, isn't it. I'm still considering my options. I could switch to smaller needles half way through the collar ribbing. I could......well really, that's my only idea. Lets hope that the third time's the charm.

On the UFO front, I'm rallying the troops for a run on "The Vest of Shame". I've knit the front, and the back, to the armpits. I did so much fussing and ripping out during the first couple of inches into the decreases for the arm pits, that I decided to knit the back all the way up to the arm pits, as a way of tricking myself into finishing. It was a very crafty move on my part, but somehow this vest has remained a UFO for (cough, cough) several years. I'm not going to let that get me down. Dad's birthday is just around the corner, and this bad boy is going to feel the sting of my needles.
The other project which may get a little attention is this wrappy vest type thingy, named "Petersburg".



I love this photo. She looks like a sexy Swedish Hippo.



It's only a short day of knitting away from making the UFO to FO transition. I'm going to ignore the differences in yarn/gauge, and press on. I'll wear this around the house, when nobody is home, and it's dark, and I've hidden the mirrors, and the dogs are asleep. It'll be grand. If it weren't for my crazy spinning, I would have breezed through this one. It's a pleasure to knit, because the cables are very intuitive, and the shaping is minimal. The wool is an oatmeal colored Blue Faced Leicester. It's amazingly soft stuff, just the sort of thing I'll want to wear in the dark, alone, with no mirrors, when the dogs are sleeping. I'm only willing to overlook this projects glaring flaws, because it's the first sweater I've knit with my own handspun. It's a little like a first car. I may not want other people to see me wearing it, but I'm darned proud of the thing.