Fudge.....It Ain't Just a Candy

So I finished the vest last week.  The copper/navy/red/brown yarn.  Knitted just the way the pattern was intended.  It turned out beautiful!  I love it.  Why didn't I follow this pattern before instead of just using the stitch count and my own patterning??  Who knows.

However, there was a little glitch when it was all done.  Isn't there always?  After finished the side/neck banding, the vest looks all bunched up on the front panels edging.  What the hell..... Well, maybe it'll all block out straight.  Yeah.  It'll be ok.

The more I look at it over the next few days, my inner knitter is telling me there is something wrong....."don't wash and block it", it keeps saying.  Ok, ok.

Ahhhh, then it hits me.  Of course it's all bunched up!!!  I made the damn thing 2" longer than the pattern said (I do not like garments that end at the waist!)  You dumbbell!!

So.....rip out the binding.  Extra stitches need to be added. How many extra stitches???  How many extra rows did I knit?  Working on the math....yeah; yeah; that sounds about right.  I can always fudge it.  Did that.  Looks better.  Take a chance.  Washed the vest, spun it in the washing machine, blocked it over the clothes rack.  Ta Daaa......beautiful!!  I even found great buttons (which an extra buttonhole had to be made to accomodate the extra stitches) and sewed them on as soon as the vest was dry.  It is now neatly folded and stored away.  But I will be taking pictures of it to post here as soon as........

the blue sweater has been fixed.  This sweater was finished sometime in the Fall.  I wanted a zippered front for this one.  The zipper went in easy-peasy.  Looks great!!  Uh-oh......wait a minute.....why is one side higher than the other at the neck???  What the hell!  How could that happen? It was knitted in one piece?!  And, upon trying it on, the sleeves are waaayyy too long (of course, this is always a downfall of mine....sleeves always a bit too long).  But these are waaayyyy..........so they'll have to be ripped out...shortened.....and the cuffs knitted again.

Well, I finally got the nerve to start ripping out the collar, got to the point that needs to come down a few rows on the one side, put all the stitches back on the circular needle.  And now it waits....until I have the patience and the brain stimuli to figure out how to fudge those 8 stitches that managed to get much longer than the other neckline stitches!  But I'm almost there.....I'm getting visions of exactly how to tackle this.  I've almost got it.  By the weekend, I'm sure it'll be done.

The sleeves will be easy because they were worked bottom-up, and the cuff is a contrasting color to the body.  So....just rip out the cuffs; rip the main color back to the length needed, and re-knit the cuffs. Viola!!

Just in case.......I will be taking that container of fudge out of the freezer.  For extra energy and brain food.

Because.....there is another vest on the needles right now.  And I will be counting rows for the extra stitches!