knitting neels

Last week was incredibly frustrating. Sometimes I have these days where I hit a roadblock and am able to overcome it the next day, but last week was a doozy.

Let’s start with a skirt. I – thankfully – sensed impending stagnation and eschewed thoughts of lining it. So I found myself at the final buttonhole very quickly and was feeling very pleased with things. I even found some matching thread to work it in. I got about half way through it when I couldn’t go any further. Not an inch would my needle move. I cut it out…

Looks ok, right?

Wrong! That is the needle plate stuck in the middle of that mess.

Needless to say I had no more matching thread after that one. I adjusted my tension (only by 1 notch!) and it worked fine the next time around. Phew! The skirt turned out great and I can’t wait to show it to you.

Prompted by thoughts of showing it here, I thought that maybe I would make something to go with it. I think pale blue is an interesting match with a tweedy brown so I got going on some beautiful chambray I got here. I always had it in my mind to make a shirt with a henley opening at the front so I got to work adapting my Archer pattern.

Well. A combination of a full teaching week, extra rehearsals and coaching for a project (at least five hours), cold weather, childrens’ germs and staying up late for no reason got the better of me. For a start, I decided to use a tutorial I found on Flickr. I love Flickr but it’s not very good for following a tutorial. Confusion was compounded by the fact that this tutorial was not exactly for what I wanted. Do you think I could find the centre front of the pattern piece? Do you think I could compute measurements for plackets and seam allowances? Do you think I could make two pieces the same length? Dear God, it was a mess. I cut five plackets, fused interfacing to the wrong sides of two, cut two plackets half the needed width, sewed one on upside down, sewed it on again back to front, sewed on the other upside down AND back to front… it took me five sessions to just get the plackets on. What is up, brain?

The good news: the plackets are straight, stay flat and line up. The bad news: I somehow removed about an inch at the neckline. Upside: I never wear shirts buttoned all the way up and it’s not too much work to adjust the collar accordingly.

Despite my befuddled state, it was a good lesson in understanding fully what I want to achieve. I admit that I wasn’t entirely clear what needed to be where. Now that I have it done, I will do it again my own way knowing what I want in the finish.

My knitting wasn’t safe, either. Using my strong desire to cast on a spring sweater (it’s not too early to dream, right?), I bit the bullet and finally picked up all the stitches to work the button band and collar on my Larch cardigan. I ended up ripping out the collar four times thanks to picking up on the wrong sides/the wrong way/lopsided/right the first time.

My patience has been well and truly tested but I think I’m through it. Sigh!