The Unravelling of Candygan

it's blurry cos of my TEARS!
Originally uploaded by indienial.

This is how my Candygan arrived at Stitch'n'Bitch on Monday. I was 1.5 inches off finishing! Just a few more rows of ribbing... I would be wearing this cardigan on the plane when I go on holiday on Friday!
And then I decided to try it on so the live studio audience could cast their votes. Unfortunately, the unanimous consensus was that the fit was "a little odd" (I wish I'd remembered to get photos of this).

It turns out, my neck isn't six feet wide, and my armpits are more than 2 inches above my waist. A few people said it was passable, but really, they were just being nice.

So I ripped.

I make baby Angora goats cry!
Originally uploaded by indienial.

... and I ripped, and I ripped. Kid mohair is not the best yarn for frogging, and I ended up with a lot of little tiny balls of yarn and a huge amount of fluff. And eventually, I was back to this:

Ctrl+alt+del
Originally uploaded by indienial.

Two sleeves and a waistband. Aargh. All those hours and hours of boring stockinette, decreasing every four rows... gone. Just like that. (To be fair, it wasn't really "just like that"... it actually took me nearly all night to frog this back, but that doesn't sound so dramatic.)

I have gone through the pattern so many times trying to work out where it all went wrong, but I followed the pattern reasonably closely, for me. I think the biggest problem was caused by me ignoring my instincts and casting off for the arm holes two inches above the waistband (as per pattern instructions). That would be fine if you're a waif-like Keira Knightley build, but unfortunately, I'm more like a Jordan. I used to be a Pammie, but "the problem" has increased as I've got older. Too much chicken, I think.

Luckily, the yarn I used was on sale and still available in the same dye-lot. A small mercy since the stuff salvaged from the frogged cardy is completely unusable for anything except for cat-bait. So I bought another two balls, and tonight, I will start again.