I finished the front of the sweater I was working on and I was feeling ambitious so I seamed it up. It is really ugly.

It’s lumpy and gross. There is waaaaay too much going on and nothing is really recognizable. Everything is sort of abstract.

Some of the lumpiness comes from the ends not being woven in. There are weird gaps and elongated stitches. That contributes to the fact that you can’t tell what anything is. The misshapen stitches cause misshapen characters and the lumps create shadows that make it even harder to identify shapes.

Then there’s the fact that the inside looks like a latch hook rug…. That definitely contributes to the lumpiness.

So the sweater is extremely ugly and I think I’m going to go back to what had been plan A.

I was working on this first, but I didn’t think the colors were working. I really liked the way my rabbit turned out, but I wasn’t completely pleased with Alice’s legs or the cake stand. I also started thinking that a more literal adaptation would be better. I ended up starting over and knitting the mess you see up top.

Now I think I’m going to go back to this design and finish it. It only has 14 rows of intarsia left so it won’t take too long. I think I’m going to knit the body about 4 inches shorter. That should save me time because I’m knitting on a deadline, but it has other perks, too. I’ll have more to wear with it and it will balance the design out a bit better because I started it too high up. I can write about it in my paper explaining my adaptation because Alice in Wonderland is all about scale and size. The part I’m dreading is ripping out my seams to get the back. I did a really good job seaming which is sort of unfortunate in this situation.

So that’s the plan. I hope I can get it done in time.

I always say I’m going to knit gloves so over Christmas break I decided to give Ringwood Gloves a try.

Here is what I learned: IF IT IS NOT A BASIC GEOMETRIC SHAPE, IT NEEDS A SCHEMATIC.

This thing doesn’t fit AT ALL. A schematic would have helped me realize that before knitting the majority of a glove. I do have the skills to make a schematic for myself to look at, but it would be nice if there was one to start with so I didn’t have to draw schematics for every glove pattern that I consider making. Seriously. Glove patterns don’t ever seem to come with schematics or detailed measurements. This particular pattern gives you the knuckles measurements and that is it. I can find the other measurements by using the stitch counts and gauge but that can be obnoxious.

I probably could have guessed that my gloves wouldn’t fit because store bought gloves never seem to fit me for the following reasons:

1. I have really wide knuckles and it’s hard to find store bought gloves that fit them. My Ringwood Gloves fit my knuckles with a little negative ease. That was why I picked the size I did. My finger width matches my knuckles so that fit too.

2. My palms aren’t very tall. I thought I could adjust for it in the Ringwood pattern by working fewer rows after the thumb gusset where it said to adjust the length, but…

3. My palms are short above and below my thumbs. The gusset was too long.

4. My thumbs are really really narrow. They’re the same size as my index fingers. The gusset was too big as well.

5. I knew that I was going to have to work more rows for the fingers because I have long fingers. I anticipated that. Store bought gloves are always too short in the fingers on me.

6. I also wear my finger nails really long which means the fingers on my gloves have to be even longer. I had just cut my nails the day I took these pictures.

7. My wrist is really narrow. The cuffs and the rows before the gusset were too big.

Anyways, now that my glove rage has subsided, I realize that I could probably rework the pattern to fit my hands. The fact that the gusset is too big in all directions means that it won’t be too hard to adjust and I could change change the cuff to ribbing to fix the size problems. I just don’t want to look at the pattern for awhile. I’m still angry with it.