I was sitting in bed writing the post below and Dave walked in before I had finished and told me two dreadful snatches of news he’d heard on the radio and depressed the hell out of me, which is a shame because I had woken up feeling quite chipper. But I have reminded myself what Het said to cheer me up when I was in pieces over the plight of the Palestinians -‘They want us to care, not to suffer’ - so I have metaphorically squared my shoulders and shall continue with the following post.
Here goes.
Tank tops/sleeveless jumpers are all the rage. I first realised this when I saw one on the Toast website two months ago.
You might as well know that looking at clothes online and not buying them is something I do quite a lot of. I love clothes but I don’t buy many. Partly it’s because of lack of money and partly its because I’m a Quaker and I try to lead a simple life.
But I do love clothes, and I really liked that sleeveless sweater I saw on Toast so I decided to make one myself. It was knitted in a random design of faint stripes and I realised that I could knit mine in scraps of wool I had in my knitting drawer. I had some arran wool and to get the same thickness from other scraps I knitted two strands of 4ply together. I knew I’d enjoy working out a colour scheme. So I began. I didn’t have a pattern so did it out of my head. This sounds clever but there’s not a lot of shaping in a tank top and I’ve knitted enough jumpers to be able to work out how to do the armholes. The neck would be trickier but at that stage I could use trial and error.
I finished knitting last evening and sewed it up and before I knitted the ribs round the armholes and neckline I tried it on. Oh dear.
It is a big disappointment. It makes me look huge.
Dave was encouraging and said ‘It looks very warm.’
This morning he said ‘You should know that horizontal stripes are never flattering.’
I was so disappointed that I texted two people who love clothes as much as I do - my daughter and Het - and sent a photo. What did they think?
Z said I was slim and this was not flattering, and said it would be a shame to pull it out, and could I make it into a cushion cover?
Het said
There is no mitigation. I don’t want to bother reknitting the neckline and ribbing it and the armholes (never a pleasant task) when all it is fit for is wearing as a snowy weather extra layer.
In answer to Het's Didn't you suspect till now? question - I was enjoying choosing the colours too much.
Hey ho.
I will probably unravel it and knit little sweaters for child refugees, which is something I do anyway when I have nothing else to knit.
I am reminded of the Pom Pom puppies incident in my murky past.
p.s. I may leave Twitter (X) in the future, so you won’t see me posting a link to my blog posts there. If you google me when you want to check in, you can find a link to the blog and then, once on the blog, if you click on the blog title it will show you the latest post.
7 comments:
just loved Het's response !
Yes, she’s a cracker.
My brother Pete said
Why don’t you knit it with vertical lines? You might need slightly longer needles but you just have to put the armholes and neck hole in different places on your needles and then sew the back and front together as usual.
I told Pete I don’t like vertical stripes in clothes and that knitting it vertically would make the armholes so much harder, but he wouldn’t understand why because he’s not a knitter.
My sister Jen texted with an excellent suggestion but I was so irritated by my failure that I had already unravelled it.
another mesaage from my brother Pete:
"I think it is unfair to say I wouldn’t understand because I’m not a knitter. I won a prize at school for my Knitting and later I knitted a whole ‘ski’ jumper with a complicated upper chest pattern on a single round needle. I don’t believe it is too difficult to knit armholes vertically."
Last comment from me:
I think the weight of wool was ill conceived on my part. Obviously Aran thickness is going to make someone look chunkier. I was led astray by the large stitches on the Toast jumper. Also the length of mine was wrong. It should have been shorter.
Here endeth the saga of the failed sleeveless jumper.
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