Christmas Sweaters

Taking Shears to the Bottom

When we visited our son and daughter-in-law at Christmas 2019, I offered to make them sweaters for Christmas 2020. After a bit of back and forth, we decided on a matching cable pattern, but not matching colors.

I began working on Chloe’s sweater in April when I realized that we were going to be stuck at home for quite a while due to the pandemic. I ordered yarn for both sweaters and began working on the first one. I finished that sweater pretty quickly–by early June.

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Over the summer, I worked on lots of other projects, thinking that I would have plenty of time in the fall to complete my son’s sweater. So time went by…

November: I made a new gauge swatch for Ben’s sweater, because I was using a different brand of yarn than I had used for Chloe’s sweater. After knitting, blocking, and measuring the new gauge swatch, I did my calculations for the new sweater and began knitting. At one point, as I was changing from the smaller interchangeable needles used for the ribbing to the larger needles used for the body, that small voice inside warned me that I had used different needles for the swatch. But I ignored this voice. I should not have ignored it, because while I thought I had used US8 needles for the swatch, I had actually used US7 needles for the swatch. The needles had been misplaced in the interchangeable needle set. I just kept merrily knitting with the US8 needles, not realizing that I had exchanged the needles in the kit. It was not until I was blocking the finished pieces, that I thought to myself, “my, that looks a lot larger than it should.” And then I remembered that hesitation a month prior, when I was pulling the needles out of the interchangeable needle kit… Oh, [expletive].

The sweater was clearly going to be too big – both too long and too wide. Too wide was probably okay, too long was not. While I would welcome wearing a longer sweater, men just don’t wear their sweaters long enough to cover their backsides. And, I didn’t have time to knit another one. So, first I had to confess my rookie mistake(s) to my son and confess that the sweater may not be finished for Christmas. I had some ideas of how I might be able to fix it, without re-knitting it all, but I didn’t know if those ideas would work. Fortunately, Ben was understanding and up for a bit of experimentation with his present. Out came the scissors. My plan was to cut off the bottom several inches, pick up stitches and work a new ribbing from the top down. I did insert a lifeline yarn to ensure that I didn’t lose stitches. Once I had cut of the bottom, I quickly got the live stitches onto a needle and began re-working the ribbing. It worked! Not ideal, but definitely easier than re-knitting the sweater! And, I will always check and double check the sizes of my needles – both for the gauge swatch and for the sweater!

At that point, I didn’t shorten the sleeves, but I could, now that I know that it can be done.

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With this fix, I was able to package up and send both sweaters before Christmas! Yay!

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