sweater surgery

You may have noticed me complaining about Christopher's sweater recently. Something about it is all wrong, but now that the weather has changed he's started asking when he can wear it. Which means that I need to finish it.

At first it seemed that the arms were too long. When he tried it on, the arms drooped down past his hands. They were at least 6" off. I removed one of the arms and tried it on without the sweater. It was fine, perfect in fact. And it matched the specified dimensions exactly.

Wondering what else it could be, I measured everything, including the gauge. What I discovered: The back of the sweater was a good 4" too wide, because for some reason the gauge was off. The rest of the sweater was fine. I spent about a week agonizing over what to do about this, gathering information from various blogs and forums before I decided to cut a panel out of the back. Crazy but true. Instead of unraveling the whole back and reknitting it, I decided to cut it.

Today was the big day. For several hours, I wandered between the living room, where the sweater was, and the den, where I have my computer. I consulted and reconsulted the blogs. I read my knitting books. I talked to my mom.

And then I got my sewing machine out and sewed two somewhat crooked zig zag rows up the back of the sweater. The actual sewing didn't take very long compared to all of the thinking I'd done. I then cut out the panel(with the help of my friend) and then sewed the seam up, by hand. The seam isn't as invisible as I'd hoped, but perhaps with a little blocking it'll lay a little flatter. And hopefully the sweater will fit better. Unfortunately, it's not smooth sailing from here. The sleeves still pucker, so I'll have to reknit at least the tops of them to make them fit better. But hopefully the biggest problems have been fixed. (cross your fingers for me)