Frustrated!

Did you ever put a lot of thought and work into something and it didn't come out the way you wanted?

I did a lot of research before casting on a sweater for my brother, who lives far away.  I got his measurements. I swatched. I spent a lot of time with a pocket calculator. I took information from four different sources including Knitting From the Top by Barbara Walker and Sweet Tomato Socks by Cat Bordhi.  I thought I was ready to publish my first original design, a crew-neck pullover.

I began by starting from the neckband and it was beautiful the way the shoulder straps grew from increases.  I got to the tip of the shoulder, started working the set-in-sleeve style which required me to put in some increases at a rate I determined, also using a few short rows in Cat Bordhi's style.

Then I did some color work off a chart from a sweater pattern that aside from that bit looked like it was 1980's dated.  By then the stitches had increased to the point where they were jammed around my 24" circular needle and I was contemplating buying a longer one.  I got down to the underarms, separated the sleeves from the yoke, then completed a few more rounds.

There was by then about thirty hours of work in this project. Hooray! I had completed enough that it could be tried on and I could see how the fabric draped around a human.  So I ran across the street because I saw my neighbor's daughter's fiance on the porch, and he looked about my brother's size.  He was a good sport about being asked to model.

You know those girly blouses where the fabric is gathered at the top of the shoulders to produce a puffed sleeve?  If that had been my intention, I'd have nailed it to perfection.  Grr-rrrrrrrrrr!

Oh, well, back to the drawing board.  I've got plenty of this yarn. I'll set this attempt aside to complete someday for myself.  I'm going to start over for my brother, this time a top-down raglan so I can be sure the shoulders will look right.