Oh look I knitted like half a sweater
Okay so amongst my mom’s knitting projects there were a few unfinished sweaters, including this off-white sweater. She had knit most of the torso piece (in the round) and had started working on the sleeves, but unfortunately the sleeves had partially fallen off the needles and had started unravelling.
For a long time I didn’t know what to do with this unfinished sweater. I didn’t really like the color, I don’t really enjoy knitting, and I’ve never knitted a sweater, so I wouldn’t even know how to finish this project even if I wanted to. But also... I didn’t want to just frog it, it was my mom’s project, a lot of time and effort had gone into it. I felt bad just thinking of unravelling it entirely.
So I sat on it for a long time, and I ended up taking yarn from this project to make a blanket. I took some balls of unused yarn, but I also unravelled what remained of the sleeves (rolling them into balls), and because I didn’t have quite enough yarn to finish the blanket otherwise, I unraveled a few rows from the torso until I had enough to finish the blanket.
With that project done, I was left with most of the torso and no idea what to do with it. Skip about 7 months into the future and I finally decided to pick this project up and try to figure out what to do with it (after having done a few tiny knitting projects).
As I mentioned before, I didn’t really like the off-white color of the sweater and I knew that I would never wear it if I finished it in that color, so (even if I hadn’t used up the rest of this yarn for the blanket) I had to get more yarn so I could finish the sweater. They no longer make this recycled-denim yarn, so I did have to go for a different yarn entirely, so there is a slight difference between texture and the size, but... I don’t mind it. Aside from black just being my favorite color, I think the extreme intentional contrast between the yarns works kind of nicely, since you can VERY CLEARLY see which part of the sweater was made by my mom and what I knit.
Now fortunately for me mom had done most of the knitting here, so all I had to do really was knit the sleeves and just a little bit on the torso before figuring out the arm+neck holes (and then finally doing a collar). And fortunately for me, the sleeves were super easy to do, as was the collar, and the first few rounds of black on the torso
But god, the neck hole. And the arm holes. That’s where everything went wrong
(Disclaimer: I have no fucking clue how to read knitting instructions. I would not have been able to look up any knitting tutorials on how to make a sweater to help me, I can not wrap my head around those things for the life of me, and I’m too lazy to learn)
So, first attempt I knitted a few rows and decided I would “split” the torso into a front and back part to knit the top of the sweater like this
Then all I’d have to do was connect the shoulder straps and attach the sleeves before doing a collar and I’d be done! But then... I started thinking... Remembering the sweater I crocheted last year, and how absolutely massive it turned out.
I got worried that if I tried to use what was essentially the same technique on this sweater, it would end up looking weird. So I consulted YouTube and came to the conclusion that I needed to do some shaping and make like a U shaped hole for the arms (instead of just splitting the round knit into two sides like I had done). Which meant I had to unravel quite a few rows on both sides of the sweater. And this was kind of a struggle
Like I tried to look up tutorials on how to unravel, I tried to do it the safe way by putting a knitting needle through the knit material and like pick up the row where I wanted to restart, but my yarn was quite tight so I couldn’t get my needed to go through for the life of me. I ended up having to pick up the row with a sewing needle and yarn, and while I managed to unravel safely, getting the shit back onto knitting needles just... It did not want to work out, it didn’t want to go back on the needles, the loops were so tight. I did manage to do it in the end, after hours of struggling, but there is a very obvious line going across the sweater now where I restarted the knitting. So that sucks
But that wasn’t the worst part yet, oh no, it was the neck hole.
So I redid the arm holes, this time shaping them in the hopes the sweater won’t look like a tent on me. And as I knitted upwards I started binding off etc to make a hole for a head to fit through. And during all this, because I had no idea what I was doing, I did cut my yarn many a time while knitting and purling from one direction to another, slowly making that U shaped hole as I made the straps.
And then came the time for me to check if the straps were long enough they’d go over my shoulders comfortably. And they didn’t, I had to make them longer. Which would’ve been fine, but that meant I’d also be lowering the already-accidentally-way-too-low neckline.
But, because of the fucked up method I had used to make the neckline... I mean in theory I could unravel it, but it’d be so much fucking effort to try to fix that... I gave up. I let it go. I made the straps long enough so they wouldn’t pinch my shoulders, and knit them together. Finished the sleeves and connected them to the torso.
Time to try to fix that neckline.
Now, in hindsight, what I should’ve done was to just do the whole thing in ribbing entirely, since from the start I had the plan to just make the biggest collar I possibly could using up all the remaining yarn I had left. But being a dumbass, I thought it’d be a good idea for me to try to knit a few rounds around the neckline normally to try to make the neckhole smaller. And, well I did do that, but it looks like ass with the knitting going in the wrong direction for 2/3rds of the neckhole, and my weird fucking attempt at decreasing (I really should’ve looked up how to decrease properly, dumbass) causing these very obvious holes to appear in a few spots.
So it looks like ass. I should’ve just done the whole thing in ribbing. I should’ve unraveled the neck before getting too deep into it. But I didn’t and now I have to live with the concequences of my actions.
Anyway, using up literally the rest of my yarn, I indeed made a massive collar, the idea being that depending on my mood I can either weird it loose and tall or fold it over (inside or outside; it looks better folded in, since it hides the bind off at the top, but also, folded outside it an kind of cover up the neckline issues a little bit).
I can say this was a big learning experience. I did learn a lot from my mistakes. I don’t think I’ll ever knit a sweater ever again. I just don’t enjoy knitting that much, I prefer crochet. But I finished that sweater my mom never did, and while it looks like ass... I dunno, I feel good about it being completed. (And it’s fine if it looks like ass I’d never wear it outside the house anyways lmao)
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