The bane of my knitting so far ...

I am sure that everyone who crafts has one project that was just the bane of their life.

No matter how many times you tried it, things would go wrong, and it ended up taking so much longer than it needed to ...

This is mine ...

It is a fantastic little jumper by TinCanKnits that literally has sizes from babe to grown up.
It is a free pattern and part of their Simple Knits collection.

  http://tincanknits.com/thesimplecollection.html

It is a gorgeous little sweater knitted in the round with a purl stitch panel down each sleeve.  This panel was the first hurdle I made myself - I didn't read the pattern properly and purled the sleeves all across the top!  So first frogging!

I used a gorgeous aran weight yarn called

Sublime Luxurious Aran Tweed

which was on sale at Hobbycraft in the shades of Indigo and Vineyard (I think ... I've only gone and thrown the label away)

This is a lovely yarn to knit with - thick and soft but with the feel of homespun.  Only problem was I had bought a limited amount.

I checked with my sister-in-law-to-be and she gave me Jack's measurements and I made the one year size.  Only problem was when I was knitting it I kept thinking it wasn't going to be big enough - even though the measurements seemed to fit.

It didn't fit!  There was no growing room at all!

So second frogging and this time it was ALL of it!

This time I went for the age two thinking that if it was too big - it would be one to grow into.  So off I knitted again ... only this time I didn't have enough yarn!  Seriously!  And I didn't have time to order over the internet as we were on route for Jack's first birthday and I was finishing it in the car.  We did an emergency stop at the Hobbycraft at Bristol only to find they didn't have any.  D'oh ... it was a sale yarn!  So I bought a yarn that I felt went the best in a tweedy mossy shade.

And off we set again.  I decided that I'd use this new yarn as the ribbing at the bottom and use the suplime yarn up by making stripes with it.  I had little bits and bobs from frogging it.

Only when I was on the first lot of ribbing I realised I'd picked up DK (double knitting) weight yarn instead of aran.  Urrgh!  I decided that as it was a fairly thick DK I would go with it.  I made sure I didn't rib too tightly with it and all in all I think it goes.

I managed to finish it off at the get-together.  And it fitted!

Only to have it returned by my parents on the Monday as it had started to come undone!  Where I'd been desperately trying to finish it (in a room that wasn't that brightly knit) I'd somehow managed to cast off and drop a couple of stitches on the way. Seriously sad face!

So again I frogged the ribbing back and re-did it.  This time I pulled and stretched and double-checked to make sure there were no loose stitches or anything... and then posted it off!

So there you go ... the bane jumper of my life!

Actually when you got knitting it knitted up really quick - especially once the pattern had been read properly.  And it hasn't put me off - I've cast another one on!  

Does that mean I'm a glutton for punishment?  Or just determined that one sweater will not win!

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