WIP Wednesday: Knitting Progress, Mistakes, and Dying Adventures

 

Let's start with the good making news. This week I've been moving right along on the Playin' My Song MKAL with Sweet Georgia Yarns and it's looking really cute thus far, I have to say. This yarn is just SO SOFT and squishy. I just love it. It's turning out much better than I ever thought some yarn from Temu ever would. I just started the 2nd clue on Tuesday morning - just in time for the 3rd clue to be released, lol. Oh well. I'm a week behind, which is actually much better than I thought I'd be doing at this point. I will have more knitting time this week, so we will see how far I can get.

Then I swung by the library to pick some things up last weekend and the lovely librarian who dabbles in crochet held some of the decommissioned library books out for me that they were giving away. Isn't that awesome? I've actually checked out that Knitting Vintage book before, so that was a cool surprise. She showed me where the other free knitting books were, so you know I grabbed a few more. Also - someone donated their entire collection of Sew Beautiful Magazine to the magazine swap at the library, and I've been picking up every issue I see in there any time I go in. I just can't help it. This is a magazine from the 80s and 90s that focused on heirloom sewing techniques and Victorian style - think adorable kids smocked dresses and ruffles on everything. They have a pattern included with each issue, so I just have to grab them.

Now for the not so great news: I finally grabbed my Susan Shaw cardigan after letting is sit partially seamed together for 2 weeks and assessed the issues. I'm trying not to be too hard in myself about the mistakes since this is my first time grading up a vintage pattern, but I also was a dummy and didn't measure things compared to my body as I went along. Being a person who sews clothing, you'd figure I would not make such a rookie mistake, but here we are. 

The shoulder area is way too wide and that stems from the side boob area also being too wide. Two weeks ago when I seamed it and tried it on, I tried to tell myself I could just fold out the excess into my seams, but when it really came down to it I knew that wouldn't look good.

So on Sunday night, I faced the facts and decided to rip back the sweater fronts. It also really doesn't help that I have lost 4 inches in my bust since starting this project, but ANYWAY. I don't want to pull out the back, and that is 22 inches at the bust, so I just kept ripping back until I was closer to 10 inches on the front panel... well that meant going almost completely back to the waist, lol. Yeah, I basically should not have increased at all after the ribbing - apparently I am lego brick shaped. So instead of being mad about it, I just bit the bullet and pulled it all out. I'm going to knit one of the front pieces and seam it on to check the fit, then do the other front panel. At least this is enjoyable to knit :)

I also decided to dye some heavy weight natural linen chocolate brown on Saturday night, and the results were ... not as expected. Somehow it turned a purply gray? Still don't understand that one. So now I have to come up with something to sew with 2 yards of heavy weight purple-ish linen. Good times. You win some, you lose some.

Have you had any successes this week? I hope so, lol. I'm glad at least not everything I've been working on turned out badly. But we can fix it! I'll just get back to knitting, I guess.