About that jinx…
That sweater I’m working on for my 8-week-old niece? I knit, knit, knit, knit like a crazy fiend to get the body finished. I gave up precious sleep. I neglected the dishes, the floors, and the fact that I haven’t yet planned anything for Pea’s birthday on Saturday. I kept eyeing the way-too-rapidly diminishing ball of yarn I was working from in dismay, yet I somehow reasoned that if I just knit faster, I could finish before the yarn ran out. A logical assertion, right?
As I removed the completed body of the sweater from my needles, I looked again at the puny stash of remaining yarn, took a deep breath, and told myself sternly that the sweater would also be cute with short sleeves.
I was focused on the wrong problem.
I spread the sweater body onto the table in front of me. I smoothed it down with both hands. Wait – was it a little big? I tilted my head. Hmm, surely my niece was a lot smaller than that? I squinted my eyes and leaned in, smoothing and re-smoothing the fabric, as if the action might suddenly make it snap into a different size. I put my hands in my lap and sat back, staring at it long and hard. Time stopped while I retrieved a tape measure and compared the 21″ chest with a handy chart of baby measurements (hint – the chart only goes to 24 months – 21″ isn’t even listed). Holy yarn balls. During the 16 hours I’d been holding the sweater, I was so worried about running out of yarn for the sleeves, I had neglected to actually look at it.
The sweater fits a three-year-old.
I have been known to exaggerate. A little. But no lie – the sweater fits a three-year-old. A smallish three-year-old, but a three-year-old nonetheless, and with room for him to eat a few dozen cheeseburgers to spare. To avoid any embarrassment that a boy might feel about wearing a lacy pink sweater, I won’t identify which three-year-old it fits.
proof of utterly ridiculous bigness
I want to blame the pattern – knitting guru Elizabeth Zimmerman is known for her “pithy” instructions, but I find statements like “babies come in all sizes” to be a bit vague for my taste. But I’ll admit that I also made some modifications and sized the sweater up based on things I read on Ravelry – I was using a thinner yarn than the pattern called for after all. But nowhere could I find any mention of actual finished dimensions of the sweater, using the pattern as written or as commonly modified by other Ravelers. Lesson learned.
Please excuse me while I rip out 12,972 stitches.
On the up-side, the reknitted version should have plenty of yarn left over for sleeves.
That is too awesome for words. I once made a miscalculation when resizing a baby hat pattern for an adult. Because of the unusual construction, I did not realize until I was nearly finished that the resulting hat would be far too large for Andre the Giant. Seriously. I should have realized that that much knitted fabric did not make sense for a hat, but somehow I just kept knitting away…
Did you use it as a shopping bag?
OOOO – don’t re-knit! Give it as a cute when-you-get-that-big gift! I received a hand-knit wool sweater that Aree only fit for 1 season, since little ones grow too fast to use anything more than a few months. They’ll love it!
I thought of that, but I was going to run out of yarn for sleeves so I was stuck anyway. If I ordered more yarn it would have been from a different dye lot and it’d have been noticeable where the colors switched. That’s OK – I’m getting more practice, and she can always use it as a doll sweater when she outgrows it. =)