Monday 21 May 2018

Me Made May 2018 - Mission accomplished

I made it! Fourth time lucky, is that even a thing? I fulfilled my personal Me Made May 2018 challenge. It was tough but worth it in the end...

The story...

I made a WATG sweater last year out of the most precious cotton yarn - so soft and sumptuous. I wore it in St. Tropez, it was good to have it on the breezy boat trip...

 

BUT, this is me wearing it when it was fresh and new. I had purposely made the sleeves a little longer because that is how I like them but as the Summer nights lengthened so did my sleeves.

The weight of the yarn made them longer and longer until I eventually stopped wearing it because I couldn't chop tomatoes without the cuffs mopping up the juices off the chopping board! I did what I always do in these situations - I hid it under the bed.

On my most recent seasonal wardrobe swap over it peeped out from the drawer and made me feel more than a little guilty. I decided to re knit the sleeves, after all I liked the body and the high quality yarn.

Firstly I tried a quick fix. I re knit a sleeve with unravelled yarn however the wobbly yarn made for the most appalling tension.


I went through the process of unravelling both sleeves, stretching and washing the yarn in skeins ready to start over again. I knit a sleeve. Grr! it was still wrong. I had not done enough decreases to make the sleeves narrow enough and then ran out of yarn resulting in another wide, baggy, useless sleeve which was now too short.
I unpicked, unravelled, washed, stretched and tried again another time. 


This time I really was like a dog with a bone. The left sleeve was now on its fourth incarnation. I was so pleased when it was finished not just because the torture was over but it is back to being the summer knit I originally wanted. It may not look too different to you but it is so much lighter in the sleeves length and width.


Did I ever mention I am a capricorn? Stubborn as a goat me. Thanks Me Made May, a great motivator to use the worlds resources wisely. 

Jo xxx

9 comments:

  1. I’m so impressed that you kept going on this! Definitely worth it, it looks great and hopefully you can continue to get lots of wear out of it.

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  2. Such a great effort Jo! It was well worth it and I hope you get much use of this versatile jumper over the summer. Cotton is a difficult material for knitted garments, well done for not letting it defeat you. The only cotton top I ever knitted very quickly moved into the drawer of shame... Me made May intimidates me, I would feel immensely stressed about participating. I am such a chicken! xx

    P.S. stitching on my binding on the crazy quilt :-) three more sides to go.

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  3. It looks really good again now. The colour is gorgeous and the fit is lovely. It's so impressive you kept going. I know after the second attempt if you were me it would have gotten dumped in a bag for months if not years.

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  4. A job well done indeed, you certainly have patience. I am impressed at how you can work back and re use the yarn without any waste. x

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  5. It doesn’t look any different but then look more closely and you can see the improved sleeve design. Clever girl and well done. Still looks lovely on too.

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  6. It looks so good, Jo. I love the color of it. I think it really suits you, something about your hair, maybe. Nice work!

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  7. Your determination won the day. Well worth the effort as it is a great jumper.

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  8. Well done Jo! I applaud your persistence and patience. I am glad I am not the only one to throw misbehaving knits under the bed.

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  9. What a fantastic top! I'm so impressed with your perseverance, it really paid off xxx

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