The Sweater Debacle
I'm knitting Leo flat on Crystal Palace circulars. On Tuesday, inches away from finishing the back half of the sweater, the needle popped right off the cord! I didn't notice and continued knitting, in the process dropping about twenty stitches off the needles into a sad gap in the middle. Considering that this thing has taken me a month of constant knitting to produce, this was about the most terrifying thing I could have seen. Luckily, the stitches were all recoverable, and I only had about ten rows to go so I just sort of continued knitting on the broken needles, carefully pressing the needle back into the cord whenever I put any pressure on it. And on Wednesday, the deed was done! I have the completed back. It is ridiculously long; it comes down to my knees. However, I am a little bit scared about the sizing. There's a whole thing with the width where I measured the piece flat and it's 22.5" wide, which is what I wanted, and then I test it on the fiance and it seems like it won't be wide enough. I am just going with it, though, because the same thing happened with the two sweaters I did for myself, and I tried to compensate by widening them and then they were way too big. I think I am just a crappy judge of what is the halfway-around point of a person.
But then there are the shoulders. For the shoulders, I followed the pattern pretty closely - bound off for the neck and then seven rows of shoulder. (Yes, I have the correct gauge.) But the seven rows don't go far enough, it needs another half inch or so to hit the point on his shoulders where his T-shirts are seamed. I hope it's okay, though I guess if it isn't, I can always compensate a half inch on the front!
A little industrial superglue, and last night I cast on for the front. Looking forward to another solid month of knitting that. Next time I decide to knit my man a sweater, maybe I ought to start on, say, size 8 needles, or something.