If this post was to be one word long, ‘duffer’ is probably the most appropriate way to sum up this year in knitting. It’s been a bit of a ‘wheel spinning in the mud, not getting anywhere fast’ type of year, with all the reknitting I did. That’s perfectly OK though; it’s helped me realise that patience isn’t as overrated as I always thought it was.

I’m really happy with how all this year’s projects turned out, but strangely I don’t have much to say about them. My favourite colours, green and brown, were well represented and I became a bit more adventurous with pattern modifications.

This year my partner Matt released a couple of knitting apps for the iPhone. While not my achievement, I’m still immensely proud of Matt and the effort he put in for a couple of tools to make my knitting life a little easier. I can’t even begin to describe how pleased it makes me to hear that the apps are also useful to other knitters and crocheters – the support and suggestions from the knitting and crocheting community has been nothing short of amazing.

Outside of knitting, I finally tried my hand at some other crafts, and was pleasantly surprised by the results. Unfortunately these other crafty activities took a back seat when I left Brown Owls to move interstate, but non-knitterly crafty activities haven’t been far from my mind. Going from thoughts to reality is sometimes the hardest part of the process, I think.

Finally, I also tried my hand at selling some of my knitterly wares. By far, this was the most daunting thing I did this year. Going to market was a lot of fun, and nerve-wracking all at the same time. I will try again next year, with a little bit more wisdom and a lot more organisation.

Perhaps the word for 2009 should be ‘wonderment’, I think my pleasant surprise has been mentioned in just about every paragraph!

On that note, I think this dufferly wonderment of a year from the Pransellknit perspective has been covered. Thank you everyone for reading my funny little blog. I hope I’ll see you again in 2010!

The back of Victory is sort of finished and the front is well on the way. I can’t quite claim the back as finished, as the stripe sequence is a bit… off. While idly reading through the pattern after finishing the back, it became apparent that I really hadn’t paid enough attention. On the right hand side of the photo is the back piece and on the left hand side is the in-progress front piece, featuring the correct stripe sequence.

Normally a mistake of this size would result in the offending project (because it’s obviously its fault and not mine) being placed (or tossed, depending on mood) into a corner so it can think about what it’s done. Projects like Matt’s Suave Sweater received such punishment. This project’s a bit different. I kept going, following the pattern properly for the front. It really comes as no surprise, but it does look better with the correct stripe sequence. So once the front is finished, I’ll rip out most of the back and redo it.

The ribbing is excruciatingly boring and the combination of 100+ stitches, 4ply yarn and 3.25mm means it’s by no means a quick knit. However, the non-ribbing sections are really enjoyable and I can’t wait to see what the finished product will look like.

I’m hoping I’ve turned a corner as a result of this recent large boo boo. Hopefully I’ll avoid the silly mistakes by not rushing into a project. Hopefully I’ll be a bit more relaxed when things go awry. I’ll just have to wait until the next spate of dufferism to find out I guess!

This blog had an unintentional break in transmission, largely due to the lack of writing material. I have been knitting, but they are projects that I can’t quite blog about just yet. In the meantime, I thought I’d break up the radio silence with a story about my next (bloggable) project.

This project was started in 2005, after finding the pattern in a local op shop. The title of the pattern book is Suave Sweaters. Unfortunately I seem to have misplaced the pattern book, but if you think along the lines of ‘Men’s jumpers from the 70s, vacuumed sealed onto the model’, you’re in the ball park. Within this gem of a book, was a nice diagonal rib jumper that I thought would look good on Matt, in a non vacuum sealed form.

So off I went, and in my usual slow and steady pace, finished all parts of the jumper by 2006 (admittedly it was a 5ply pattern, using 3mm needles). As I was seaming it up, I got Matt to try it on, and it was HUGE. The sleeves were more like drop, rather than set in, sleeves, and you could reasonably fit 1.5 Matts in the body.

Down, but not out, I frogged it all and started again. The second time round it took me a bit longer due to a slight lack of interest and the gauge conversions to get the parts right. Being slightly wiser, the parts were measured against Matt at regular intervals and everything seemed to be going swimmingly. Until seaming.

I had managed to screw up the conversion at the armscye, so the sleeve caps were waaaaaay too small. Slightly more forlorn than the first time, the suave sweater sat in my pile of ‘to do’ knits for another year or so. Now I think I’m ready to tackle it again.

I have a handy dandy calculator in hand and a little bit more knitting experience under my belt. Hopefully it’ll be third time lucky.

Does this make me a process knitter? Or just stubborn (or foolish)?

Not sure what exactly it was about my green cardi, but whenever I did anything with it, it seemed to suck the common sense right out of me.

First it was not getting the fronts even, then it was forgetting that I could take passable flash photos using the external flash bought from a recent school fete for the princely sum of five dollars.

So, the Tyrolean, or Duffer, Cardigan is now finished.

Tyrolean Cardigan from Vintage Knits by Sarah Dallas
4.25 balls of Panda Pure Wool, dark green
3.25 and 4.00 mm needles
Start: August 2008
Finish: June 2009
Ravelryed here

Overall, I’m quite happy with it. The bobbles look good, it’s warm (very important now it’s getting proper cold here), and the buttons match well. I suspect that I may have mentioned it in a previous post, but the yarn and buttons were stash, and I already had the book. That in itself pleases me as much as the finished product!

The only modification made to the pattern was to lengthen it slightly to accommodate my longish body. The cardigan body is a perhaps a bit boxy for my body, but that’s easily solved by only using the buttons around the waist. If I were to do it over again, waist shaping a la the non-cropped, non-tryst vest might be a better option for me. That said, I’m sure this is something I’ll be wearing a lot.

The four days off at Easter makes this place a hive of productivity. It’s not stressful like the Christmas holidays are and the weather is much more conducive to productive work. This Easter, I was determined to finish off all the major knitting for my Tyrolean Cardigan. Good Friday I sat down and knit and knit and knit and knit and faffed on Ravelry and then knit some more. Finally, yesterday afternoon, the second sleeve was cast off, folded it up and put it with the pile of Tyrolean Cardigan parts ready for blocking. At this point, I was feeling rather chuffed that I had finished something within the completely non-binding non-verballised timeframe.

Then I blocked it and marvelled at how nicely the stitches had settled the pieces were pinned out. It was then that something seemed amiss with the front pieces. No amount of pushing and pulling would make them look like mirror images of one another. Turns out one is 5 rows shorter than the other.

Normally I’d try to fudge it and hope that it’d look alright once it was seamed up, but it doesn’t seem possible in this instance because the bobbles draw too much attention to the discrepancy. Luckily my dufferism only occurred at the cast off and decreases for the neckline, so it shouldn’t take too long to fix. To be honest, I’m not sure how I managed to muck it up like that, but by golly it’s a good lesson in carefully checking over measurements before gleefully casting off and loudly proclaiming ‘Finished!’.