Then my mother convinced me to give it one more go. Got the right yarn. Opened my sewing cabinet; found hidden balls of yarn that I had ordered originally, stowed for safe keeping. Screamed. Now have a drawer full of purple yarn in every effing shade available. With a week to go before Christmas, I started seaming with pigheaded determination. And flinging cats off every few minutes.
The pieces came together this weekend and the sweater is suddenly done. DONE. I am free. And I have a mother who does not read my blog, so it can be paraded around on the internet before Christmas.
Sleeves! Two months apiece.
The back took only 4 days, luring me in with a sense of accomplishment - and yanking that feeling away when I ran out of yarn on the front sections (yarn which was, as I have noted, stuffed in my cupboard the ENTIRE TIME). 3 months apiece.
The enthusiasm, it radiates.
I have been tearing it up with a hat today, recovering from yesterday's birthday party. Children everywhere, pizza torn to pieces, cake sung over, glow-in-the-dark drinking straws wielded in an unsafe manner, and a piñata that met a grisly end. Successful, as my clumsy attempts at party planning go, but the fun ended in a funeral for a tiny crab which had been pinched up from the beach and presented as a gift in an old peanut tin. There were tears. And mini kitkat bars and silly bands!
That's a wonderful sweater. I'm sure your mother would be happy you didn't give up and stash it away. Now I'm thinking I'd better commission you to make me a sweater! ;-) I've been trying to make a hat from this book for the past 3 years, and I can't even learn how to do that. The book also has some lovely sweater designs, but if I can't make a hat.... Needless to say, like your frustration with finding matching yarn and eventually 'giving up', I gave up on knitting altogether! Happy Holidays, and Happy Birthday to Gavin!
ReplyDeleteThe sweater is GORGEOUS. I am still so thrilled to actually have something that you made with your own two little sexy hands. Did I tell you that Brad wears his hat EVERY DAY? EVERYWHERE? He lurves it. I love mine as well. Still working on that photo of all of us wearing our hats. It's forthcoming, I PROMISE.
ReplyDeleteOh, yay! I was looking at that orangy-red and wondering if it fell into the mysterious spectrum of colors which men consider too unmanly. Figured, it is the color of things that are on fire, how could that be unmanly? win!
ReplyDeleteMarie - Twinkle is, it is commonly agreed, teh debil. Throw Twinkle in the fire and get the first Stitch 'n Bitch book. In order to snap those brain connections in place and have the clouds part over your knitting, you need two things: heartache from which to be distracting yourself (my girlfriend joined me after her grandfather died; I started because of He Who Shall Not Be Named) and the mantra, "Go inside; grab your scarf; take it outside; before the cat barfs" (needle in; wrap yarn; pull it through; slide it off). You will be obsessively muttering and stockpiling yarn in no time.
That sweater is so bad ass! What a feat of determined muttering. Right on, hard on. You are the best!!!!!
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