Who Wants A Baggy Jumper Anyway?

Back in January I showed you a pattern for a rather comfy jumper, perfect for lockdown.  I thought I might be able to get it finished for Miss Tialys the Younger’s birthday on 24th February.

This was the pattern

This was how far I’d got with it when I wrote the blog

and this is how far I’ve got with it now.

Yes, yes, I know it’s exactly the same photo enlarged but the sad truth is that really is about where I’ve got to again  having had to start from scratch on more than one occasion.  At one point, I had knit up almost the whole thing, excluding one sleeve, knowing there were two or three mistakes but thinking they wouldn’t show.  How wrong I was.

Fisherman’s Rib.  It seems like a simple enough stitch to do – a variation of k1, p1 rib in that you knit into the stitch below (k1b) instead of the usual knit stitch – and it is!  The problems come if you should make a mistake by not putting the needle in the wrong bit of the knit stitch or, heaven forbid, drop a stitch altogether.

Not having the heart to take one of my own before ripping it all out, I’ve tried to find a photo of ‘a mistake in Fisherman’s Rib’ to show you the horror but couldn’t, even though the fact there are many, many tips, tricks and YouTube videos showing you how to put them right means I’m not the only one making them.  I tried unknitting (or tinking, or frogging) then I tried unravelling rows and picking the stitches back up again but I couldn’t get them back on the needle the right way round.  I thought I had succeeded at one point so carried on knitting but it left an obvious line through the back of the jumper and I knew I’d never be satisfied if I left it there.  Nightmare.

In the end I undid it all right back to zero and was just going to leave it.  I don’t like giving up though so I thought I’d try one more time and use a lifeline.  For the non-knitters amongst you – and heaven knows why you’d have read this far as the pants would surely have been bored right off you by now – that means threading a piece of wool through a row so that, if a mistake occurs later on, you don’t have to rip out the whole piece but only as far down as the lifeline.  Obviously, as you progress with a few inches of faultless knitting, you take out the lifeline and move it up to create a new one.

Needless to say, since inserting a lifeline I haven’t made a mistake but there’s still a long way to go and it’s last chance saloon for this jumper because, although I really like the effect of that raised rib, and I’ve been able to use stash yarn, life’s too short to grapple with it repeatedly when I could be getting on with something else.

Anyway, the 24th of February came and went with no jumper for Miss T. the Younger.

However, I’d spotted on a blog somewhere, something else I fancied having a go at so I abandoned the needles for a hook, found some double knitting yarn in the remains of my stash and made these instead which, as she’s just moved into a new flat, served as a little house warming gift too.

Ahh! I’d forgotten the more ‘instant fix’ joys of crochet.

If you are a knitter, have you ever tried Fisherman’s Rib and, if so, did you manage to get to the end of a project without tearing your hair out?

If you are not a knitter, I apologise for the non-quilting/dressmaking/general crafting/gardening/animal based content of this post and, be assured, I will be back to one or other of those subjects -or something else altogether – before too long.

In the meantime, and as compensation, here’s another couple of woolly jumpers.

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist.

 

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