Happy 75th Birthday Mum

Some of you may have thought that I have been a bit quiet on the Textured Knitting front lately but I was working in stealth. Sometimes my mother reads my blog.

Last week was mum's 75th birthday and this was my gift:

It was knitted in Bendigo Rustic [colour Aran!] 8ply and I used a little over three 200g balls. It was started on Wednesday 21st April but some days no knitting was done - days when I just couldn't face the cable needle again. There are a lot of cables in that jumper, believe me! Two trees of life on the front and back plus two on each sleeve.

Moss [seed] stitch diamond panels on all four pieces plus the lobster claw cables.

Phew - textured knitting indeed.

I started it in the round but then realised I would have to knit back and forth above the armholes. I decided to knit the sleeves flat because I figured I could seam it more easily that way. Remember the child's sweater that found its way to the frogpond? It was the trial version for mum's jumper. Was the child's version worth knitting? Well, I did do short row shaping and a three-needle bind-off for the shoulders so some of the lessons I learnt were applied. Also the lesson of not adding the sleeves one row to one stitch was carried through! [And that child's sweater was almost finished on the trip home so you'll be seeing it here fairly soon!]

The knitting was finished on 31st May. It sat for a few days while I waited for some dry weather to block it [that never happened; it rained all week]. While I waited to block, I contemplated it - I thought the neckline was wrong but DD tried it on and it looked okay. On the eight-and-a-half-hour trip to my parents' place, I seamed it and sewed in all the ends. Mum never blocks her knitting so she wouldn't notice but I sure can so please don't look too closely!!! I wasn't happy, something was niggling away at my brain, but I couldn't put my finger on the problem.

Mum loved the jumper [sweater]. She was so excited! As soon as mum tried it on I saw it - the neckline was too low in the front and way too high in the back! But no-one would let me take it apart to fix it!! :-(

So mum has the jumper and I have the pain of knowing it's not right!! She'll wear it one cold day and find it uncomfortable and, because we live so far apart and she thinks I'll never know, she'll never wear it again. Or, worse still, she'll try to take it apart and correct it herself! I hope not because I've used techniques [three needle bind off, knitting in the round, mattress stitch] that she's never heard of let alone used!

Superficially the jumper looks great and mum is really happy. Just remind me to get my hands on that neckline next time I visit them!!

Happy birthday mum!