What a Life!

So I frogged the pullovers this weekend – both of them – and started over. I don’t know what possessed me – if I was just in a bad mood or what – but I did it and I’m glad.

I re-graded the patterns.

Change #1 – Different gauge. I went with 16 sts over 4 inches (vs the 14 sts on the yarn label – I am doing a garter rib stitch pattern after all). I started on Joey’s sleeve first and after working a few inches I decided my row gauge was 24 rows over 4 inches (I had estimated 22 rows – the yarn label says 20 rows; again, I am doing a garter rib stitch pattern so that makes sense).

Change #2 – Instead of going off of my children’s actual measurements (which don’t match the CYC standards any more than mine do), I am using the standard measurements for a size 6 and a size 10. Why am I doing that? Well, it seems that children’s clothing – at least the clothing my children wear, which is pretty basic stuff (knit shirts, button-down shirts, etc) – seems to be cut with quite a bit of ease. Seriously, if my children’s shirts had no ease or even if you could pinch-an-inch, they would have very spindly arms. I swear, their t-shirt sleeves are twice the circumference of their arms. And my kids are average height/weight when I take them in for their annual physicals. That’s how their clothes are made, and these sweaters are being worn over those clothes, so lots of ease.

Last year Ben didn’t wear the sweater I made him (based on actual measurements) at all because it didn’t fit. Joey’s fit okay, but never looked very good so he only wore it once or twice. Caroline wore hers more, but the fit on her was much better.

I think the standards take measurements and spread them evenly over the size range. I mean, think about a high school student vs a college student – they may be the same height, but the college student is more, shall we say, filled out. You can just tell them apart that way. Kids are spindly, but apparently we dress them so they are more filled-out.

I frogged the sweaters Saturday night and started knitting Sunday morning. By the end of the day, I had done two sleeves and the back. It’s a raglan, so the front and yoke remain, and it’s only a child’s size 6, but still, that’s a lot of knitting. Which leads to the title of this post: I’ve decided I’m going to name my knitting projects after the books I’m listening to as I knit them. Sunday morning I began listening to the third book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy: The Return of the King. Clearly it was a very good story. Today I haven’t had a chance to get back to it so not much knitting has been done. I am about a third of the way up the front, but most of that was done during school this morning.

This weekend I am hoping to take the boys to the Nearly Full Moon Walkabout at Spring Creek Prairie Audubon Center. It will probably be cold and those sweaters would feel really good, so I’m trying to finish both of them this week. I’d like to make them mittens, too. And finish Ben’s hat. We shall see. I am only a third of the way through The Return of the King, so I have lots of good listening in store. Still, I don’t know if I’m that fast of a knitter. Indeed, we shall see.