Sweet and Sour

First the Sweet!  

This is Susan B. Anderson's Hello Baby Cardigan - it's a free pattern on her Spud and Chloe blog.  I didn't have any Spud and Chloe yarn, so I just knit it in what I had on hand (Dark Horse - a soft, acrylic worsted weight yarn).  

As I was finishing up the Hello Baby sweater, Susan posted the free pattern for the matching Hello Baby Hat to go with the sweater.  So I cast it on and finished it as a part of the gift.  Aren't they just the sweetest things?  And they were so quick and easy to make.

Check out Susan's Spud and Chloe blog if you are a knitter - she's giving away yarn and a copy of Spud and Chloe on the Farm.  Too Cute!

And then there is this sweater.  I cast this on in November of 2009.  I knit the body as the pattern directed, which included many inches of cabled ribbing.  I decided that the cabled ribbing was too tight after I finished knitting about 10 inches of it on a smaller size needle.  So I ripped that out and reknit the entire 10 inches of cabled ribbing on a larger size needle.  Then I knit the sleeves and the button bands and finished the sweater up.  I took pictures and put it on Ravelry.  But I never did like it - the ribbing was still too tight and the sweater was very unflattering and not comfortable.

So, about a month ago I raveled the button bands and then the 10 inches of ribbing.  I reknit the sweater as a plain cardigan and put a plain ribbing on the bottom.  I already liked it better.  So I went ahead and picked up stitches up the front, around the neck and down the other side and knit a wide button band.  I finished it up and I really like this sweater now - Finally!

Since I used reknit yarn, it had a bit of kink in it and it showed in the knitting.  Simple enough to fix, right?  I washed the sweater and laid it out to dry in the only place available - the laundry room floor.  It was getting stepped on over and over, so I picked it up and put it on the shelf thingy in my dryer.  I've done this hundreds of times with sweaters - mostly handknit - and never had a problem . . .

Sour

. . . until this time, that is!  One arm fell off the shelf thingy (what are those things called?) and got slapped by the agitators on the drum each time they went by.  The right arm of the sweater felted - more in some spots than others, but pretty much up to the armhole.  I have to admit that some not for public words came out of my mouth when I took my poor sweater out of the dryer!  

Girl Far From Home said "Can't you just reknit that sleeve?"  My first reaction was no, but then when my head cleared, I realized this sweater was knit from the top down, so the sleeves were also knit from armhole to cuff.  It's no big thing to cut the felted part off, unravel anything salvageable and reknit the sleeve.  I used every bit of the yarn I had, except a small 1" in diameter ball.  The lovely thing is that when I bought the yarn for this sweater (almost two years ago now), I bought two extra hanks - cuz patterns are always short and I always make sweaters longer.  I used one of those hanks in the making, but I gave the other hank to Dena because it was definitely going to be extra and she thought it was pretty.  She hadn't used it yet, and it's now on it's way home and the sleeve surgery will happen when it arrives.

I wonder if I will ever really be done making this sweater?