Making THE Sweater

So somewhere during the rug making process, I decided that I should make a sweater for my mom. I got some practice yarn and tried out the pattern that I had found and once I got the hang of it, it went fairly well. I was worried about actually making the flat pieces into an actual, wearable sweater, but thought I'd give it a try. I mean, I'd crochetted a rug or two why not a sweater?

I worked furiously at it. Every spare moment I was either working on a rug or a sweater piece. The first big problem that I ran into was that the front piece I made was about 2/3s the size of the back piece. Not Good. So I had to take it all apart and start over. I had to pretty much abandon the pattern except for the part of how many stitches to start with to get the pattern itself right. I took notes as I went so that I could do the exact same thing for the other side. I finally got all three parts done and started working on the sleeves. When I got to the top of the first sleeve I started to doubt how these pieces were really going to come together. Nothing looked like it would fit right. So I got a ton of safety pins and started pinning it together. That's when I realized that the sweater was going to be way too big for my mom. I was sad, frustrated, tired and just plain out of luck. There was no way I could get it done before Christmas and now I didn't have a present at all. I finally decided on making mom a small purse out of the yarn and in the sweater pattern so she could at least see what it would look like. Then I tucked a picture of what the sweater was supposed to look like in the purse. I brought the bag of half done sweater to the Christmas party too and after dinner we took it out and it was huge on her. Luckily the 1 1/2 sleeves I had done fit right. But everything else had to be ripped out and started all over again. By the end of January I had finished it and it fit! Big thanks to mom for being so understanding about her present being a month late.

Usually after Christmas, whatever crafty thing I've learned to make that year's presents falls to the wayside. But for some reason, I really liked to crochet. I have a bunch of friends, in real life and online, who knit and their projects always amazed me. I decided that I wasn't ready to give up this new craft.