Welcome me!

So here I am in my new cubby hole in the blogiverse. It was time for a change. I've been squatting in this real estate for a while now. I'd created an account so that I could comment on my friend's blog more easily and I'm happy I was able to secure the name that I wanted.

Anyhoo, it's the last day of the year and everyone is making up their lists of best of/worst of things of 2007. I will resist that trend, mostly because I can't really think of anything at the moment.

In knitting news, I've finally taken the plunge to make a sweater for myself. (It's Thermal from Knitty). Making adult sized sweaters kind of freaks me out, actually. Size in knitting is determined by gauge, which is the number of stitches per inch. Most projects I make are small so if I'm not making the same gauge as the pattern, the difference is usually small enough so that it doesn't matter all that much. Or if it does matter, I'm not undoing a lot of work if I have to start over. But imagine this...the sweater pattern specifies 7 stitches per inch, and your gauge is 7.5 stitches per inch. Oh, that hardly matters right? On a hat or a pair of socks, probably not. But the difference of 7 vs. 7.5 stitches per inch, on a sweater pattern made for a 48" bust, results in a sweater with a bust measurement of 44.8 inches. Even for a 34" bust sweater, this difference would result in a 31.7" bust. So yeah, gauge matters on sweaters.

I've only made four sweaters in my short knitting career. Three have been baby sweaters, and I don't really care if those are too big because babies grow so quickly. Even if they grow so quickly that the sweater fits for exactly one day, the items are small enough that they don't take a long time to knit. The one adult sweater I made was for my very slim, petite mother in law, and even that one took me about 60 hours.

While I am pleased with myself for actually attempting a sweater for myself (reflects my Maturity as a Knitter by Overcoming Fears and Embracing Challenges), I am kicking myself for choosing this particular pattern. Oh, I love it and I'm using a silk/wool yarn which is just yummy. But it's going to take me fracking for. Ever. It's a fine yarn at a dense gauge at a large size. I've almost finished the first sleeve, and this has taken me almost 20 hours. For one fracking sleeve! The body has 3x as many stitches around as the sleeve. This may just be one of those 100 hour projects. Can you imagine the heartbreak after investing all this time into the object and then you find out it doesn't fit? Now maybe you know why I've been skittish about making a sweater for myself.