Meh, Knitting, and Meh Knitting

Originally I wanted to write a “what I did this summer”-post but yesterday held a big knitting disappointment for me. Which made me realize that this only was the last straw on top of a dozen or so other disappointments. None of them major and all together enough to make me feel very – meh.

My husband has already written about our not so joyful summer break. I didn’t know that you could get almost depressed because your computer is broken, but there you are, this is modern life. In fact it was his computer that broke, and got fixed, and was still broken, and got fixed, and was still broken. I’m about to bring it home again tonight, so keep your fingers crossed. Maybe it will be really fixed this time. (And thank God for extra apple care security plan. Hurray!)

So back to the knitting. Some of you may recall the brown cardigan I have been knitting for a while. In fact I ordered the yarn on Valentine’s day (this year that is) and since then I have been knitting away, unraveling whole pieces of it from time to time, but steadily making progress. This is how the cardigan looked yesterday at noon:

Only half a sleeve left to knit. This is how the cardigan looks now:

See, even the camera has a blurry eye… And then I remembered why I haven’t knit anything besides scarfs and socks for years. The problem is that for about twenty years knitting my gauge was always way too lose. Every thing I knitted ended up to be too big. Then I had enough of this and I taught myself to knit more tight. Since then every single thing I knitted ended up too small. I forgot all about this when I started knitting that cardigan. I thought if I did everything right there wouldn’t be a problem. Until about two months ago I held one of the finished sleeves to my arm out of sheer curiosity. It was, well, about three sizes too small, but we all know that you can block it and then it will turn out right, won’t it? Right?

It was about that time that my sister asked me for leftover yarn. She wanted to knit for charity. I didn’t know there was such a thing in Germany. I had heard about such things in the US but never here. Then, on the other hand, it isn’t as if I were knowing vast amounts of people who like to knit. There’s my mother, my sister and my aunt and that’s that. Of course I immediately started knitting for that on my own. Knitting for preemies. Stricken für Frühchen. For hospitals.

So I laid my cardigan aside and made these:

Yes, those are three socks. I still have to knit another one because then I started reading knitting blogs like this one and then I had to start knitting jaywalker socks for my husband immediately. I knitted the first sock on our way to Paris and back, finished it only to find that the fit was terrible, revisited the pattern, found out that it was a very bad idea to knit the heel differently on a whim because it left me with a foot that was much too wide. Then I unraveled it. And since there was another mistake early on I had to unravel the whole thing and start over again. I just finished it for the second time.

You know I thought I was a quite experienced knitter. I can do all the techniques. Only now I am feeling a little low. I would be a nice change to knit something that would go right the first time and then actually fit.

I won’t give up though. I took me about four months to almost finish that cardigan the first time around. Well, January is a nice cold month. No problem. But first I’ll knit the second of my husband’s socks. And the second teeny tiny baby sock.

I still have a huge stash that begs to be turned into baby socks, hats, and blankets. And three sewing patterns. And fabric for a dress. (Since I have just gained about 2 kilos (4,5 lbs) and it’s a summer dress I’ll leave that and the matching bag for next spring. I’ll probably finish my husband’s bag first and then buy some new fabric to make myself a bagpack tote following Liesl’s pattern.)

So I made. a. plan: First I’ll knit the second of my husband’s socks. Then the second baby sock. Then I’ll start knitting the cardigan again. (Which size? Which needle size? Do I do a sample piece before to see the gauge if it never turns out that way anyway? Do I just start somewhere and then measure once I’m a few inches in? AARGH!)