Sometimes I get a vision in my head of something that I want to create. It might be inspired by an item I’ve seen, or it might be the solution to a need I have. My first course of action tends to be scrolling for hours through patterns on Ravelry and LoveKnitting, but often I can’t find anything to fit my, usually rather specific, brief.
One such time was when I set my sights on a cropped, ribbed, roll-neck jumper that was nothing more than a figment of my imagination. I’ve written a few of my own patterns before, but I’m not confident enough with garment sizing to do so for a jumper, and especially one that I wanted to fit snugly. After much research, over multiple days, I finally found a pattern which I thought would form a good basis for my dream jumper.
All I had to do was use the stitch pattern and measurements from View A, the neckline from View B, shorten the length to make it cropped and lengthen the sleeves to make them long. Simple enough wouldn’t you say? I did the sensible thing and prepared with maths, measuring how long I would need it, adjusting the neckline to merge the two patterns and went full steam ahead with confidence in my calculations.
Sadly, my confidence was somewhat misplaced and, while I’ve ended up with a beautiful and Instagram-worthy jumper, I finished it three months ago and it’s yet to be worn.
The fit is too loose and, paired with the fact that it’s too short, I can’t shake the fear that the slightest of movements will reveal my boobs to the world! On top of that, the neckline is too wide and the shoulders just won’t sit in the right place.
It’s kind of hard to admit that something you put so much time and effort into just isn’t right. It’s even harder to admit that what I thought was foolproof calculation was, in fact, way off. I’ve been questioning whether knitting it up on smaller needles would help, or wondering if I could revisit the calculations and make it right but one thing’s for certain, I’ll have to frog it.
Saying goodbye won’t be easy. We had quite a long thing going trying to make this dream a reality and to reduce it back to nothing but a pile of yarn feels sort of brutal, but it’s the best thing all round. I can’t spend any more days looking at it hanging in my wardrobe wondering if maybe, magically, it suddenly fits.
But silver linings and all that, at least I’ll be able to knit it up into something else and this time I’ll make sure it’s a winner!