Monday, January 26, 2009

When love turns into something else...

I loved my Sylvi up until this weekend.

I loved knitting Sylvi and I couldn't finish her fast enough to wear her. I saw myself walking around in Canada and the US (my trip is approaching!!!) wearing my Sylvi. Bringing the Canadian wool back to Canada.

But...

This weekend she made me cry. Mind you, that time of the month is coming up and I'm a bit fragile, but still. She made me cry.

I was nearing the end. Or so I thought.

My plan for Saturday was to finish the three flowers I've knitted so far. The petals, 15 of them, needed to be sewn down. I also wanted to sew up the side seams. My plan for Sunday was to insert the sleeves and start knitting the hood. That doesn't sound unreasonable, does it?

I sat down on Saturday afternoon to sew the petals. And that's when it started. It took me 3 hours to get the first flower to look half-decent. The petals crunched up, or stretched out funny, or ended up tilted and way too unsymmetrical. Two of the petals drove me madder than the others and I redid them twice. So, all in all, that flower had me sewing 9 petals...

Then I started working on the second flower on the back and that's when the tears came. The first round of them. I couldn't get the petals to form a nice looking flower even with just pinning the petals down using safety-pins. Too much room between the petals to the left and having to overlap petals to the right. And then I noticed that the three petals I had made after blocking the back piece, were considerably lighter in colour than the two first ones. Very noticable. And that's when the second round of tears came.

I decided to quit for the night.

Sunday I picked it all up again. I didn't want to deal with petals so I decided to seam all the pieces together instead. When I'm about to do mattress stitch I tie the two pieces together first to keep them from shifting. Just a safety measure for myself so I'm not making things uneven. Well, when placing the left front piece on the back piece, I noticed they didn't have the same length. The front was longer. I counted the edge stitches and they were the same... The pieces were the exact same length when blocking and after I had the pins taken out. Now, the front had shrunk with 5cm/2in and the back with 10cm/4in! The third round of tears came.

After some swearing, I decided to not care, but just accept that my Sylvi would end up shorter than what I had aimed for. I sewed the seam up. And then I decided to attach the first sleeve. I was curious as to what it would look like when the pieces turned into something similar to a coat. Or at least half a coat. I started my little knots to attach the sleeve to the back and front pieces and realized something wasn't right... The sleeve came on shifted. I counted the edge stitches on my pieces. On both sleeves and both fronts and the back. And realized that I have a deeper raglan shaping done on my sleeves than my body pieces; I have knitted more rows when shaping the sleeve caps than I have when knitting the armhole shaping for my front and back... I recounted the stitches. Still too many on the sleeves.

I can't just rip those rows out and end up with more sleeve stitches at the top, as that would leave me with too many stitches to work the hood chart. I need to frog a couple of rows and make double decreases or something to make things match up. The fourth round of tears came.

I spent the rest of yesterday evening reading Harry Potter, swearing at the mess on the table that was Sylvi, and wondering if I should just bury her in my closet.

I'm so frustrated I can't find the love anymore.

6 comments:

Pikku- Kettu said...

Oh, I'm so sorry! Hopefully you'll get the inspiration to fix her because I really wanted to see your Sylvi.

Anonymous said...

Breathe, relax and do some yoga :)
I know how you feel, I was close to tears with my quilt but in the end I learned to love it. Give it a couple of more days, hide it in the cupboard, read some more Potter and maybe Sylvi will be your best friend after all. and remember: most of the time, we're the only ones who see our mistakes, for everybody else Sylvi will look just as perfect as you imagined her.

Stiney said...

I'm so sorry, Anna! I haven't touched my Titled Duster since I realized that the collar was too long and needed to be re-done, so I know how you feel. Kram!

Geek Knitter said...

She made you cry four times? Oh Anna, I'm sorry! :kram:

Annas garndrömmar said...

Uschdå! Man kan ju verkligen bli knäck av mindre! Hoppas du får ordning på allt, kanske en sak åt gången. Och tänk på din lyckokänsla du hade innan!

Anonymous said...

Wow...I can see why that would be frustrating. Spending hours on knitting a flower? That's a lot of patience on your part, at least! :)