Category: project – Anna

Anna was a disaster.  I have no idea what I was thinking when I started her (4 years ago?).  I see why she was banished to the back of the closet, she should have been sent to a place much further away. 

I know she did not look that bad on the blocking board but when I picked her up and basted her together, (what are you crazy, did you think I would spend hours fretting over the best way to seam her without first checking to see if she was worth the effort?) she was big and blowzy and all over the place.  Those puffy places with thick yarn really puffed out.  Nothng stayed in place it just kind of rolled over itself.  Do you remember that movie, The Blob , well, that’s kind of what the sweater looked like. I felt like a polar bear, or a fox with its winter coat on, and if you’ve ever seen a fox without its coat you would know exactly what I mean. 

The only good thing about Anna was that she was so bulky she made my somewhat hefty arms look waif-like.

So I threw her in the washer with HOT water.  Twice.  I let her dry flat, I didn’t further the felting process by using the dryer.  The result still looks like knitting, but it is flatter and I am really happy with the results:

The felting made the bobbled portions of the yarn lay flat and drew them in to show off the lacy portions created by the thinner strands of binding yarn. 

Now this Anna is too small for me to ever dream of wearing.  The first Anna was too big, she grew substantially in the wash and I could not push all those fluffy areas flat and small again.  I am not sure how that happened as I knitted the small and used significantly LESS yarn than the pattern called for.   The new Anna is about 30 inches and has no give whatsoever.

Still, I love the fabric I created and envision her being used in a jacket or something.  I have passed her on to the sewing pile where she will eventually be transformed.

Even though I have spent most of my time on other non-knitting projects, like housepainting, great progress has been made on Anna and she is on the blocking board, important here as the edges are quite bubbly and need extra help being straightened before I even attempt to seam:

The body is knit in one piece, front to back.  You are seeing the back here. And the front is in the next shot.

But wait… What’s this???

Ahhh!  That’s why Anna had been thrown in a heap into the back of the closet, that funny little bump thing, I must have had trouble knitting her and keeping track of my stitches…  I can’t believe I started a bigger size as this one is plenty big and I was a good bit smaller when this project was started.  I also had some other trouble, goodness knows what I was thinking.  If I was decreasing it was all on one side.  Impossible to recreate the past.

Well, one thing is certain, I will not be ripping out the entire sweater just to fix that stupid little tumor at the beginning.  I suppose, had I been smart, I would have taken Anna off the needles and looked at her good and hard before I started knitting.  Deep down, I knew there had to be some problem, but no, I blithely plowed ahead.

Several options present themselves.  I can just cut off the bottom or unravel from the cast-on up and re-knit down leaving a bind-off edge at the bottom instead of a cast-on.  Or I can zig-zag a little line where that edge should be and just cut the offending piece away.  Of course this depends on how I am going to seam this.  If I use mattress stitch that might not be the best option; but I am not yet convinced that mattress stitch will be the best option.    I am seriously considering seaming this sweater by sewing machine and then hand stitching the edges down to the main fabric, making a flat seam.  Not the usually accepted method I know, but it might end up being the most attractive. 

Tomorrow I am going into NYC to meet my friend Mary so there will be no seaming of sweaters until the weekend.  Tesla is going with me.  We have gotten back together and all our previous misunderstandings have been forgiven. 

The beginnings of a sleeve on DPs: