Avast At Last

I started knitting last year's Christmas present for Davis in early October of 2006. Unfortunately, the gift that waited for him under the Christmas tree was a half-finished sweater and an I.O.U. for the rest of it.

Obviously things hadn't gone smoothly between Avast and I, and relations continued to deteriorate through the spring when Davis tried on something that looked like it should have been in an avant-garde knitting pamphlet from the '60s. Not a cool mod-looking garment, more of a what-were-they-thinking homage to astronauts, the result of a collar that jutted up about an inch and a half from his shoulders. It was so funny that I should have taken pictures, but the pain was still too fresh. Davis felt my pain so acutely that he actually tried to convince me that it looked fine and that he'd wear it just as it was (and, yes, he probably would have actually worn it for a while, but only because he's a kind-hearted man who loves me).

Well, after much knitting, frogging, re-knitting, re-frogging and re-knitting some more, I was finally able to give Davis his Christmas present last month. I'm happy to say that I'm kind of pleased with how it turned out.

I learned a lot while knitting this project:
1. While I'm not a fan of seaming, I'm even less fond of lugging around a whole sweater that's knit in one piece.
2. I should always read through a pattern before selecting it, and I should avoid ones that involve picking up a couple hundred stitches several times over.
3. It would behoove me to choose yarn that has a weight that's somewhere near the ballpark of what the pattern calls for. Fortunately, a sweater that's the same density as carpeting comes in handy up here in Maine.