I'm obsessed with being warm. I'm either cold or too hot at any given point of the day and, thus, usually layer myself in clothing and warm-making garments in the cooler months of the year. I made myself a pair of knucks a long time ago, the pair pictured above. I love them - I wear them fall through spring every year. Seeing as I wear them quite frequently throughout the year, the boyfriend got to see them a lot - once he even tried them on, though I begged him to be careful as he has gigantic hands. After deciding that my knucks were just so awesome and convenient, he asked me to make him a pair, too.
While we were at the fiber festival last year, we kept an eye out for yarn in a color that he liked - he was hoping for brown, black or grey. Ultimately, we decided upon the Dementor colorway by Shelby B, a mix of black, gray and purple (which he decided was fitting as purple is my favorite color and, therefore, would remind him of me everytime he wore them).
I got started on winding the hank into a workable yarn ball when we got home that evening, and shortly set to the task of starting his knucks. I had it all figured out, I thought I was being so clever. Seeing as I'm a full-time college student who often takes far too many courses than necessary each semester, my free-time during school is at a minimum. So, I decided that I would make all of the fingers for both knucks first and take extensive notes in order to produce an exact matching glove should I be interrupted by life. Well, my cleverness did not pay off nearly as well as I had thought. Waiting as long as I did to start number 2 after finishing the first one - somewhere like 9 months - proved to be a detriment to the gloves.
Even though my counting was exact both times, I managed to create two different gloves...one has 68 stitches at the cuff, the other is missing 4. One cuff is tighter than the other at the opening (due to this shortage of stitches).
I have been wrestling with undoing the cuff and starting that part again (I can easily increase stitches on the cuff a couple of times in order to create a better match). But then I find myself thinking 'why stop there? why not just rip all the way back to the thumb attachment, count your stitches, then match that the the number of stitches on glove number 1...you have all the rows down pat, just need stitches fixed now.' The perfectionist in me.
The boyfriend insists that he loves them. And that he won't complain a single bit about how tight the one cuff is compared to the other one. Then I think to myself, 'Well, then, you can always just make him another pair, you know. You have brown yarn, now. He likes brown. You could also stripe it with black. He likes black and brown. But this was really nice yarn that you used, it wasn't cheap. Maybe you should just fix the first pair and then make him a pair out of the cheaper stuff later?'
So now I'm cleaning the house in order to keep myself occupied and not think about the knucks for a day. I've been working on them a lot this past week. I've already had to rip back a couple of times - once because I was being stupid and totally messed up the thumb gusset and once because I got antsy and started the 2X2 rib for the cuff early. And that's not to mention all of the times that I had started the crab stitch edging, decided it looked like ass and ripped it back only to start again (that'd be five).
This wasn't the only project to be muffed up in a ridiculous way - the mukluks that I made for my cousin, those too were a victim of poor time management. I started them right around the same time I started the boyfriend's knucks. I made one and then....a whole lot of nothing happened until 9 months later. Following my pattern notes was impossible because I lost them (crap!) and had to just fudge the second slipper. This time, while crafting slipper number 2, I took notes. Extensive notes. After I finished slipper two and realized that it only matched slipper number one in the toe area (the heel and body looked incredibly different), I decided that I was going to redo the first slipper - after all, I only had pattern notes for slipper number 2. Rip, rip, rip. I ripped that puppy all the way back to the first row of the heel gusset. Since this was crochet, it wasn't that difficult of a feat to rip so much of a project out and redo it - knitting tends to be way fussier when I do this. I then found myself with a fairly good pair.
This is probably why I am so tempted to just rip out the cuff from the gloves. I can insert my needles into a straight stockinette row, rip back to that point and try it again....I could insert my needle into the row just above the thumb join and start that again, too....I could also just relax about it, finish the damn gloves, block them and give them to him, already. Poor guy has been waiting almost a year for them.
*so I didn't wait quite a year but, really, "nine months" doesn't read as well as "a year"
