Blunder

I'm a big girl. When I make a mistake, I admit it. And, boy, did I ever make a mistake with this sweater. But I'm not sure my misstep is anything compared to the crime committed by the woman who designed this sweater in the first place. I know exactly where I went wrong, but I won't bore you with the details. Suffice to say, I've knit myself backwards into a sweater that was designed by someone recovering from a bad weekend in Vegas. I myself could have found two other ways to knit this thing and it would have been vastly improved from the octopus-like monster that it is.

This, my friends, is a "seamless" baby sweater:



Seamless, indeed. I fully admit to having knit the left sleeve on the wrong side of the front. That mistake was mine. I had no earthly idea what the designer was doing when I started out, and was following her directions in blind faith. I made the mistake when I came to an ambiguous part in the instructions. Having no idea what she was having me knit, I made an educated guess that turned out to be wrong.

HOWEVER, I came to the end of the sweater only to discover that this "seamless" baby sweater involved GRAFTING the 31 stitches on the tops of the arms and SEAMING the 21 stitches on the bottoms of the arms. I can kitchner stitch with the best of them. I'm not put off by that so much as the fact that this sweater is not what I signed on for. I imagine the National Guard is feeling the same way right about now. But without the wool.

When you tell me that the sweater I will be knitting is seamless, it leads me to believe that I will not be doing anything like seaming and certainly nothing as involved as Kitchner stitching.

I ripped the wonky sleeve back and am now in the proess of re-knitting it. I discovered my mistake after having grafted the top of the first sleeve. I was SO CLOSE to being finished. It's like getting to the last two chapters of a book only to discover you have to re-read chapters 5 & 6 because the author didn't know what the heck she was doing. It's the stubbed toe of knitting.

I'm not done yet, but I'll post pictures when I am. And eventually I'll stop shaking my fist in the general direction of the pattern's designer.