FO Friday: Long Overdue ...

This project was technically finished at the end of February, lol, but I wanted to wait until I had decent pictures of it before I posted it here. My husband and I were finally together with a camera and a freshly mowed back yard last weekend, so I ambushed him and forced him to take my picture. I'm so demanding, I know :)

This is my very own Boobholder/Minisweater which is a free pattern from Stefanie Japel. I loved the design of it straight off - bolero style sweater with puffy sleeves?! Count me in :) Essentially this sweater just provides me with sleeves, which is exactly what I need from a sweater - I live in Florida so warmth is not a requirement. The sad part about this project is that I started it in August of 2012. Holy cow, ya'll! In my defense, I had no idea what I was doing back then. I just jumped right into making a sweater, but really the pattern is not great for a beginner and I know that now. The pattern is only written in one size and it took me forever to track down that it is for a 34" bust. The pattern doesn't ever say the size it's designed for (I know, right?). I had to dredge through all the Ravelry projects and read their notes to find that out. Me having a 43" bust, I had to make it A LOT bigger. The raglan sleeve line in the pattern says to increase 17 times and I ended up doing 30 increases. I would just wor a few rows, then try it on to see if the sleeve ends met under my arms, then work a few more rows. It was very tedious, all that on and off the needles, but it paid off.

I used Premier Yarns Everyday Soft Worsted Yarn in Aubergine. Being such a new knitter when I started this and not having any yarn requirements listed for larger sizes, I bought 4 skeins of this stuff, lol, I was very paranoid that I would run out and never be able to buy it again (yeah, turns out this yarn is easy to get and pretty consistent in color - I had no idea back when I bought it). The pattern for the 34" bust said it would take 400 yards of Aran weight. I ended up using 485 yards, which was only 2.35 skeins, so I have plenty of this left. I'm sure it will become animal parts or something, lol. 

Now for the true confession - my sweater ended up a little too big! See how it's ripply at the neckline? I must have increased too much which basically made it too wide in the shoulder. I don't worry about it too much though because my hair always covers this up. Also because of too many increases, the sleeves don't really puff up like the pattern shows they should. I think if the sleeve cuff hugged my arms a bit more then they would puff up more. Also, this made for severe overlapping at the closure. The pattern only calls for one button, but when I tried it on I saw it was definitely going to need two. So I ripped back and did the bottom over again to include two buttonholes. If I hadn't done this, it would have been noticably huge or the little tail created by the single button would have slid out all the time, so it was worth it. Live and learn :) 

 The back fits nicely. See the little gathers at the top of the sleeves? I wish they would puff out better. Oh well.

Ok another confession - being the knew knitter that I was, I wasn't so great at remembering to always garter stitch the first and last 5 stitches of each row, so I ended up having 2 places that I basically had to fake it later. One was way up by the top and I was just not going to rip all that out back then. Another spot was at the curve of the v-neck. I have no excuses for that spot since that was part that I did fairly recently, lol, brain fart I guess. I'm sure you can see the spot now that I've mentioned it, but most everyone in person has no idea there is anything wrong there so I guess my fake-purl-bump-embroidering was a success. 

I was also excited to scrounge through my vintage button collection and found these beauties. These are vintage buttons from my friend Tara and they match perfectly. The best part is that I only had these two of them! So they were obviously just destined to hold this bad boy onto my boobs - case closed. I think they are super cute with their little carved design - so much more fun than just plain colored buttons like my last sweater :)

And since we were out taking nice pictures, I finally got good ones of My First Sweater :) So I figured I'd post them here just cause, lol.

And of course Gordo joined us for our little shoot, so I have to include a cute shot of him :)

Look at that sweet face!

That's it for me :) Head over to Tami's Amis' Blog to see what others have completed lately.

WIP Wednesday: Attacking the UFOs

This week has been pretty productive on the knitting front. I found myself with no project to work on last Thursday and I knew I might need something to work on Friday night (I drove some of the young singles from my church to a dance in Orlando). I didn't want to drag all my animal making stuff with me, and I knew I wouldn't get far enough into a new project to be able to just work on it with no problems. So I turned to my UFO (unfinished objects) pile. I started this "boob-holder" sweater in August of 2012! It's a free pattern by Stefanie Japel. At the time I had no idea what I was doing and I quickly reached a problem I couldn't diagnose, so I set it aside. I picked it up again last September and got pretty far only to mess it up big time when I had to pull back. I knew I could fix it, but it was one of those problems you have to just sit and mess with for an uninterrupted hour or so and I just didn't ever feel like it, lol. But I needed a large project! So last Thursday I spent about an hour and a half getting it back to workable condition. 

When I fixed this last week, I was at the point where you section off the arm holes and just work on the body and since then I technically managed to finish the knitting :) It's funny to work on something that I distinctly remember I just could wrap my head around at the time only to have absolutely no problem now - to the point that I'm amazed at how quickly this went. And I've already pulled back to change a few other things!

I tried it on a few nights ago when I finished the knitting and discovered ... the waist is way too big. The pattern is written to have no overlap going on under the boobs, just a button to fasten it in the center. As you can see - I'm overlapping it quite a bit there. It's also a touch longer than I want. So, I've decided to pull the whole waist out, lol. I won't go all the way back to where I was last week, but I'm going to pull out about 10 rows. There will still be a good deal of overlapping I will have to do, but I'm going to add an additional button hole to make it more secure when I fasten it. I'm really happy with this project and I completely LOVE these sleeves. Puffy sleeves for the win! I have the sleeves all finished and seamed on the bottom, so literally once I finish the waist it will be done and wearable :) Now that I know more about knitting, I know what a quick and easy project this really is and it makes me want to make another. If only it wasn't in such heavy yarn! Anyone know of a similar pattern in a sock weight? I'm sure I could buckle down and do the math to make it in sock weight, but seriously look how long it took me just to fix a tiny snag, lol, and I hat math so you can imagine how long it would be before I actually do that. One of these days ...

I also realize you can see my absentmindedness in the photo above - I forgot to keep with the garter stitch edge in a few spots. I didn't realize until I was way past that point at the time, and at this point it just isn't in my best interest to pull back that far - one of them is up by my neck! So I will be faking some purl bumps with some extra yarn once I finish the rest.

Last night I just didn't feel like pulling all that knitting out (I know, I'm temperamental, lol) so I grabbed another long time UFO - my Happypotamas! I made a couple of squares and have renewed my love of this pattern's cuteness. Hopefully I become addicted to it soon and can knock out the Lollo Bear pattern too that's been languishing untouched in my collection. I even have all the yarn to make it! You can't rush, I guess.

I'm kind of torn on my feelings about working on so many UFOs. On one hand I'm thrilled - it's a great feeling to finally finish something that's sat so long. On the other hand, my pile of projects I'm in the middle of is dwindling (I only have 3 others in there!) so I won't have anything to just pick up and work on soon. 1st world problems, amiright? So that's what I've been working on this week. Head over to Tami's Amis' Blog to see what others have going on :)