Friday, February 20, 2009

Gotta love a good sweater


The season is warming little by little, the trees are sprouting once again and the snow is melting off. Of course, I have to crochet a sweater.
In my defense, it's difficult to find a pretty sweater pattern that fits a woman of my generous size, so when I DID find one, I had to make it.
I found it at canadianliving.com ....No one will care if I'm American, right? Good because it's a great site.
I decided to make mine in a deep claret red and in the store, butter yellow seemed such a soft and pretty contrast so I chose that for the cuffs and neck. After putting it together though... the yellow brought out the red in the claret making it look less wine and more tomato. In turn, the red made the yellow more vivid. It looked a little like I should top a burger. I was almost thankful that I had screwed up and the sweater was a lumpy, bumpy, gap ridden mess as it gave me a good excuse to demolish it and start over.
The finished sweater looks lovely IF and I do mean IF you can follow the pattern. Each different size is in inches or centimeters, making for a much more accurate fit. However, each size has a variation in the pattern, the result being that someone decided they could economize by writing confusing jumbles of rows and pattern sizes and repeats. The pattern was no written to be easily understood even before the bright idea of interchangeable instructions between sizes entered the writer's head. Now that I've warned you, here is the link to the pattern.
A warning for anyone attempting the Crochet V-Neck Pullover!
It's worth it, the pattern stitches are easy to make, but be sure that you have no interruptions or you may do what I did and make the wrong sizes for different sections. Bust and sleeves were for the largest, waist for the second smallest, and hips for my size. At some point I got confused about what hook size I was using as well (my child's fault, he stole my current hook and case of hooks)and made part of it in a smaller gauge.
No pictures, I frogged that sucker the second after I took it back off. Here is how far I got since frogging it and restarting last night.

2 comments:

River Glorious said...

I think that I would cry bucketfuls after frogging so much... Hope it comes out to your taste.

Melanie said...

I nearly did. I had frogged it, then when I wasn't looking my son unwound every inch then tossed it til it resembled spaghetti. I think shock took over... the air was sucked from my lungs and I had to exert self control. I told myself to breathe in, breathe out, remember he's 16 months old. Hahaha. I spent 8 hours unknotting, winding, and defuzzing it all. Only on snip of the yarn with over 900 yards to wind, not bad if I do say so myself!