rescue mission...

I wasn’t going to tell you this story – I felt like I not only had egg on my face, but it had dried! But I got an email the other day from my friend Tom – he had test knitted the Manfriend Hoodie for me and his new puppy chewed the cuff of his red one. When he was opening the sleeve seam to take the cuff off and replace it, he inadvertently snipped the wrong thread and now he has to re-make the entire sleeve! He was talking circular needles and stuff! LOL! Misery loves company!

the evidence!

It brought this back to my mind. I was preparing for the Maritime seminar in Charlottetown, PEI and one of my classes was seaming on the machine so, killing two birds with one stone, I had all the pieces done for a denim blue hoodie that I was making for my friend’s hubby, Ray, so I could show the actual seaming in the class. I had knit like a mad fiend to get it all ready in time and must have been working on autopilot. Usually when I complete one piece, after taking it off the machine, I roll it lengthwise, yank to set the stitches, unroll it and give it a steam or press, depending on the fibre, to casually flatten it out and then look it over to make sure all is well before proceeding to the next step. Somehow, either I omitted this step or, ignored the fact there were ‘lines’ across this half of the front. I had the shoulders joined and one sleeve on to take to the seminar. When I was in the middle of the class in PEI, I sort of noticed them a bit but said to myself, ‘that will come out in the wash, proceed with the demo’. I put the other sleeve on, seamed the underarm, attached the hood and the stabilizing trim for the centre front, ready for the zipper. Technically, I wouldn’t have done that until after I washed the assembled garment but did it in the interest of presenting as much as I could.

When I returned home, I somehow overlooked the laundering – I guess I figured that this was like my 7th or 8th remake of the pattern at that point and I could guesstimate the number of stitches for the front edges without the shrinkage factor. I went ahead and finished the whole thing, even sewing in the zipper before I put it through the laundering, still not paying any attention to the ‘lines’. When I took the hoodie out of the dryer, it was like I’d been punched in the stomach! OMG! it was horrid! how could I have overlooked this? There were obvious flaws in the yarn that looked even worse!

I spent the rest of the day berating myself and the machine knitting population of PEI! Nobody said a word – that damn quintessential Canadian politeness!

fixed!

The next day, facing reality, I re-knit the front, checking several times that I was indeed making the right one, the left! Luckily, I had extra yarn and I keep very good notes of everything I knit. After it was done, I picked out the zipper and began the process of removing the left front. I realized the good thing about this pattern was there were only open stitches on the top of the sleeve and that RTR row after the shortrowing saved the stitches well enough so I was able to rehang it right on the machine and reknit only that row. And of course, the shoulders, but that was a piece of cake after the sleeve cap – everything else was totally cast off individually so removing the hood was not jeopardizing the neckline in anyway. Got ‘er done and back together in no time and didn’t admit it to anyone until now!