Wednesday, August 08, 2012

Sometimes sizing mojo deserts me

Updated to add: This post made my lovely commenter think she had offended me. :( She totally did not, I was really just using what she said as an excuse to poke fun at myself and how my projects don't always work out as planned - something which I'm sure has happened to all of us! I'm very, very sorry to have made her feel like she needed to apologize to me - this is clearly a valuable lesson for me to learn about blogging and responding to comments. I've edited things so that hopefully I don't sound offended; and instead sound amused at my own knitting vagaries, which is what I meant to be.

On Ravelry, one of my readers was lovely enough to comment on the cardigan I tried to make for DD2, but actually ended up fitting DD1. She light-heartedly observed that this "hey, it doesn't fit" phenomenon seems to happen to me quite a bit. This reminded me that sometimes the size of things doesn't always turn out properly, you know?

For instance, my dad's Morgan hat for Christmas?

In progress, 2012-05-04, side view

I tried to finish it recently and found that somehow, although I had been following the large instructions, it had come out way too small. No clue how that happened, since it was sized just right when I made it last year for DD2's teacher. As far as I can tell, the only way to fix it is to rip the whole thing back and start again, probably with larger needles this time. (And I'm almost certainly going to run out of yarn the second time around, but I should be able to get around that by knitting the part that folds under out of sight in a different colour of the same yarn.)

My Ljod cardigan turned out too big for me:

Completed, 'in action', front

DH's 50th birthday present was far too massive:

Completed

This Sourpatch vest ended up fitting DD1 instead of DD2 as originally intended:

Completed

These mittens for BIL#2 are pretty damn huge:

Completed, grey cuffs

This much-anticipated Fjalar sweater for myself doesn't really fit right in the proper places, plus I made the sleeves too short:

In action

I meant for this to be a beret and failed miserably (I have since figured out beret physics, though, yay):

Completed, side view

These socks have never fit me properly, I think I made the feet too short:

'In action'

This tabard keeps falling off my shoulders:

2006-04-12, in progress

These mittens never got past this point as it was clear they were going to be far too huge:

Prior to frogging, 2012-01-15

This sweater for DH totally fooled me - I started out making a medium, then the ribbing made me think it was going to be too small, so I ripped it back and did it in large instead, and guess what? Too big, of course!

Completed, front

And then, worst of all, my first adult sweater for DH, which ended up coming down to about his knees:

Completed

I can't be alone here, right? :) Do you have any projects with sizing woes?

2 comments:

Peyton VanWinkle said...

Oh my, I didn't mean to make it into a whole big thing... **shame** Your projects are lovely, really...

-theflamingnarwhal

Keja said...

Yep - so with you there. I have a pair of socks that I made just too short for my feet, a cardigan with sleeves that were waaaay too long, and a sweater for my Father years ago that was far far too huge for him (although he gamely tried to wear it). Recently a friend had requested a sweater from Vogue. I had intended to knit it up for her birthday. Two and a half years later, after I'd ripped the sleeves out twice (because apparently the model in the mag. had pins for arms) and redesigned the neckline somewhat, finally she tried the finished product on and I still had to run a crochet line around the neck to keep it from falling off her shoulders. I was so happy it was done and so crushingly dissappointed that it wasn't done right....