I’ve been working on this sweater for my son since last spring. He’s  a tall, muscular young man and the yarn is fine, with a gauge of approx. 7 sts. to the inch, so progress has been slow.  I’ve been making the pattern up as I go along, trying a few new things.  Saddle shoulders are one of the new things I decided to try.  Not only have I never designed a garment with saddle shoulders before -I’ve never even knit a garment with saddle shoulders!  

 Lesson #1- know what it should look like before you start. 

 I finally had the pieces knit up and sewn together the other night and I called my son into the kitchen to try it on before completing the finishing touches.  He struggled into the sweater and what stood before me looked like some kind of cartoon character!  He could barely get his muscular arms through the armholes and the fit was just completely messed up.   Luckily we have a good sense of humour in our house and we all had a good laugh as he struggled out of it.  I put it away until morning knowing I might destroy it in frustration if I tried to work on it that night.

The next day I painstakingly picked out all the stitches for the armholes and sleeves.  This was no easy task.  I’m pretty picky about my sewing and the stitches were tiny, well hidden and well anchored. 

 Lesson #2 – sew the sweater together with a slightly different colour yarn so stitches can be found if needed.

 What I discovered when I got it apart was that, of course, I had sewn the armhole shapings together wrong.

Lesson #3- mark important shapings  with brightly coloured stitch markers.  

I hadn’t done this and had to guess as to where the sleeve shaping matched with the body pieces- and I’d guessed wrong.  I finally did get it all taken apart, pinned  it together with many small plastic pins and slipped it over my son’s head last night and – much to my surprise and delight- it fit beautifully. He was as surprised as I was at the sweater’s transformation.  

Whew! It looks like all that work will not be wasted after all but it was a close call.  No fear knitting is an admirable thing to aspire to but I will definitely take the lessons I’ve learned with this project to heart when attempting my next creation.

Posted in knitting