The Spicy Knitter: The Frustrated Knitter

I took Delphine off the blocking board and it is still pretty skin tight. It's a shame because it's actually a really darling top - something I think I would wear often, but probably not if it is so skintight that it makes me look fat/sloppy. Also, there is one row of the lace where I screwed up that sort of bothers me - but not too bad. It kind of gives it character. Kind of.

What to do? I still need to join the shoulders, then I'm going to try blocking again... and be ruthless with the stretching this time! I made it really long, so I think I can get away with a lot of horizontal stretch without making it too short - the challenge is just going to be getting the yarn to give that much. If this doesn't work - I'm going to have to frog and start over knitting the larger size. This pisses me off - especially given frustrations 2 and 3....

I've been knitting the ever popular Rusted Root sweater from Zephyr style - which is a short sleeve raglan top with puffy short sleeves and a lace panel running down the front. The instructions are kind of poorly written, which has made the project kind of frustrating, but I finally got the hang of it and yesterday I reached the the point where I separated the sleeves - so it's easy sailing from here... except...

I've thought the lace looked kind of weird since the beginning, but I kept thinking it would look better once several repeats got going. Now that I've got 4 repeats I finally figured out what my problem it. The problem? In the middle of the second repeat I accidentally created a hole in the wrong place!! Arg!! I can't live with it and I'm going to have to rip it back. Here is an illustration:

You might also notice that the leaves look a little sloppy. That's because I've been slipping the stitches the wrong way! Arg! (I slipped purlwise and it turns out I should have done it knitwise). I discovered this about 10 rows back, but I decided it would be fine as long as I kept doing it throughout. But now that I'm ripping out 20 rows, the logical thing to do is just to rip it all out and START OVER slipping the right way. Yup - after all my struggles getting through the top I've got to do it again! (which, BTW takes FOREVER with a raglan - as you probably know)

Another frustration with rusted root: I tried it on and the underarms are way too tight. This means I'm going to have to make mods, which means I'm going to have to think. Lame.

I'm taking the MA bar in two weeks, which means I have to study all day HARDCORE, but I can't stop thinking about all these stupid knitting problems! I deal with stress by knitting, but now that I need to knit to deal with bar stress, all I'm turning to is knitting stress. Maybe I should just ditch it all and make an old-school garter stitch scarf? lol