Knitting and second chances

I’ve been experiencing a lot of knitting redemption lately. If only life were more like knitting. In knitting when you make a mistake, you can just rip back and start again. . . If a project goes horribly wrong you can frog the whole thing and start again. You can even revisit old projects and fix them using the tricks you’ve picked up since you originally knit them.

I’ve had a lot of knitting second chances lately. First there was the winter wonderland sweater that started looking like this

and after frogging and starting again ended up looking like this

Next there was the manly sweater. I knit if for David last winter. I wasn’t so great with finishing back then. Also, my gauge wasn’t so great back then. The arms, being the last thing I knit, were too big for the armholes. They always had a bit of a poof at the shoulder seam (NOT manly). On David’s last visit I took the sleeves out, re blocked the sweater, reattached the sleeves (in a non sucky way this time), and gathered some of the unavoidable fullness under the arm, so there’s no poof. Yeah!

Finally there’s my felted purse. I made it two years ago. I didn’t know about blocking to shape felted items. After finishing my felted tote and blocking it to make a nice flat bottom, I decided to take another look at my old felted purse. Here it is before, dried flat, with a sagging bottom, deeper and narrower then I’d like, with a strap that’s too short

First, I knit a strap extension, felted it, cut the old strap and reattached it to make a longer strap.

Then I soaked the whole bag and reshaped it to be wider, shorter and have a nice flat bottom.

I also reshaped the pouch to fit my ipod perfectly.

I also made a perfect little pouch for my cell phone.

Why can’t life be more like knitting. Have a fight with your spouse, rip it back until you didn’t say whatever stupid thing you said. Make a bad work decision, frog it, and start again. Eat a whole box of Kraft macaroni and cheese, resoak your butt and reshape it until its narrower and higher.

I might get a real life second chance soon. I can’t talk about it yet, because it’s not a done deal. When it is, I’ll let you know if I can make life imitate knitting!!

There was some real life second chances at Jersey Boys this week. Chris Jones, our Frankie Valli had a personal day on Wednesday. Our Frankie understudy went on for the first time on Wednesday night. He did great! All in all a fantastic first performance. There were some moments that be improved but there always are. We had no idea when he would get to go one again . . . until we got a call from Chris that his flight had been cancelled. That meant Rick was going on again. It’s so great for an understudy to get to do on twice in a row. He got a second chance and he was even better!!

In other knitting news – TUBEY IS FINISHED (the crowd goes wild). I love it! It took me forever to choose the colors for the stripes, and I’m so happy with what I chose. It’s 100% alpaca that I got it last year’s Smiley’s sale. I made it out of Filatura Lanarota Puno. At $3.00 a skein, that makes a $27.00 sweater. I love when I get a super cute garment for way less then I could buy it at a store. Here’s the colors from the pattern.

I only used 4 colors for the stripes instead of 5. I didn’t like the brown color, so I doubled the eggplant where the pattern called for the brown. I also got a pink instead of the purple and used a more neutral color for the yellow.

I have to wait until I go to work to take a good picture of the sweater, but here are some bad in the mirror photos I took.

Not having David my inhouse photographer is hard!!

Today is my day off which means, time for some spinning and cast on my next project, and of course my knitting group. More later.