Me vs. baby sweater

Excuse me for being absent.  After all that merry-making, this mama needed a little vacation.  Once the baking, decorating, gift-planning, -wrapping and orchestrating were done, and the feasts had been given and the cleaning up and the laundry and the reorganizing . . . then it was time for a little quiet.

I do love Christmas, but I'm also happy that I had a few days left in these 12 days to relax my poor head (and feet).

Do you see those four extra tails?  Knots.  Two of them in so few yards.  I hate this yarn.

I did finish most of my Christmas knitting.  Every year I think dear Aaron's knitting gets pushed aside.  He never minds if it becomes Valentine's Day knitting.

I hemmed and hawed on the pattern, because he is a man, which means grey or black, zero pattern . . .

I found an interesting one with a different kind of top shaping--raglan decreases.  How about that?  I think I'm going to like it, if I can get through the miles of ribbing for the cuff.

And don't forget this.  Remember the baby sweater that should have only taken me a few days?  It should have.  It would have.  I think that my overconfidence made the sweater mad, because it secretly knew that I pushed it aside a few times to knit other things, knowing that I could whip it out in two days.  That's right:  in my head, I was thinking two days.

So the sweater taught me a lesson.  A few times.  The yarn may have ganged up on me, too, because it knew that I didn't like it.  Yucky wool/acrylic blend--not my choice at all!  The babymama prefers washable synthetics.  Psh.

Here's the story:

I have been knitting at 5 sts/in on US 5s with worsted yarn for a few years now.  Like clockwork.  It doesn't matter what the yarn is, nor does the pattern matter (unless it's ribbing or cables).  Always 5 sts/in on 5s in worsted.  So when I planned this little ensemble, I figured on that gauge, skipped the swatch--which I do pretty frequently if I'm knitting in worsted on 5s--and off I went.

I should have noticed after I finished the hat that something was amiss.  That was part of the yarn/sweater trickery. I didn't notice.  Henry, who is 9 months older than dear goddaughter, tried on the hat and it was huge on his giant pumpkin.  Growing room, I thought.

I knit the entire body up to the arms and then began on an arm.  That thing could fit around my wrist.  That's when I noticed it might be off.  So I checked gauge.  FOUR sts/in.  What?!

I'll admit there might have been some cursing, and then a heckuva lot of ripping out.  The upside was that at 4 sts/in, there are a lot fewer stitches to knit.  When I got all of that settled out, I did finish it in 5 days, both the hat and the sweater.  I kind of win, don't I?

I'm not thrilled with the end result--the neckline never looks right to me.  I was using EZ's seamless raglan, and when she shapes the neck, she is shaping the neck up to the hairline!  I would like a rounder, more open crewneck.  I ripped it out and worked short rows to raise the back, but it still doesn't look right to me.


Next time I'll figure it out.

For now, I'm done.  It's getting wrapped and delivered today.