Friday, October 19, 2012

I'm a little scared.

Is it normal to be this terrified of finishing a project?  Seriously.  My jacket is scaring the hell out of me.  It took me more than a day to work myself up to actually seaming the pieces together.  And then I stressed for several more hours before binding it off.  To be fair, both were done using techniques I'd never done before, mattress stitch for the seams and Jeny's Surprisingly Stretchy Bind Off for the binding off.  But it's not like they were hard, and I've learned plenty of things off the internet  before.  I guess I'm just terrified of how this is going to turn out.  I'm so scared that this is going to get done and just look awful.  Or maybe not awful.  maybe just a little awkward and clearly homemade, which would almost be worse.  I've never worked this hard on a project I'm actually going to finish. I'm really good at starting projects and then never finishing them.  and this is one of the biggest projects I've ever done. I'm just really scared it's gonna be a waste of time.  A LOT of time.  and pain. and effort. and money, too.  I spent about $50 on just the yarn.  I mean, I've been planning and thinking and planning and thinking about this for a long time.  I mean, the Ravelry entry for it was made November 11, 2011, and that was when I bought  the yarn.  That doesn't take into account the months of planning and math and carefully examining pictures and frustrating online searches that went before that.  so in all, I've been working on this for more than a year.  Not straight through, obviously.  I've only be seriously knitting since July. still, though.  That's about four months. That's some serious devotion coming from me. I can't believe I haven't gotten bored and quit.  It helped that I had Amanda making fun of me and telling me I'd never finish, and Caleb actually caring about this.

and lets not even mention all the flaws I'm picking at in the piece.  (you know that means I'm going to anyways.) the biggest thing I'm worried about is the joins in the first front panel, the lumps caused by the russian and braided joins.  there's bumps in the fabric and I hate them.  only two there, though, after that I started just joining new balls at the edge so I could just tuck the ends into the seams and have no more lumps.  the seam does create an indent in the fabric, which I don't like, although I'm reasonably certain that will block out.  I'm afraid the straps are too long, or will stretch out too long under the weight of the jacket and leave giant gaps at my armpits. that can probably be fixed by just moving the seam on the straps though. 

hey, that was a shorter list than I thought.  which is good.  although the level to which the bumps in the fabric bother me make this list seem huge.

so now, all I have left is the armwarmers and the trim to knit.  and tuck in the ends.  oh, god there's so many ends to tuck in.  why are skeins so small?  and I need to block the jacket and paint the wings on.  I'm very nervous about the blocking, the only place I can think of where I'd have enough space to lay it out is out on the trampoline in the back yard, which has the added benefit of being a place where it will dry faster, but the idea of stretching this out and just leaving it out there makes me very uncomfortable. But it has to be blocked before I can paint the wings on.  I am deeply concerned about the future of this jacket, because I know from my tiny swatch piece, and what I've read about cotton that it won't hold the blocking through the wash.  It'll need to be laid out again after overy wash to keep the ribs lying down.  I really wish there was something I could do to make the blocking stay.  maybe I'll google it.

uhg, also another on the list of things about this that stress me- I think I may have made the first armwarmer too small.  I cast on 60 stitches based on the fact that my ribbed gauge is more like 6 sts per inch than 7.  and now I think I may have been wrong.  GRAAGRLE.

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