Candy Cardigan Catastrophies...

You ever have those horrible knitting accidents when you first started out knitting and figured you would try moving up from scarves and stuffed animals to suddenly full tops? Mine was dubbed as the innocuously innocent Candy Cardigan from knitty.com's 2004 winter edition. I saw that delicious little cardigan in all its lusciously sweet light pink and fuchsia combo and candied striping as a must-have for my first cardigan years ago. That dream became a reality when I was at my local yarn shop in my hometown one weekend and found black and white yarn on sale and figured that now was as good as any to divulge in good yarn so off I went with that yarn back to my college apartment and begun work on it in between watching episodes of Firefly courtesy of my summer roommate.

Early on I made sure that I had the right gauge, picked out the right size, had just the right amount of yarn, and certainly enough patience to try to make something fitted for myself. I thought that this would be so cute to wear over a skirt or paired up with jeans and in mainly white with a black and white striped corset middle it would look classic enough to wear out on a date. I was highly optimistic given how cute the cardigan looked on the model. I forgot, however, that the designer/model in the pictures had a perfectly petite hourglass figure and I, unfortunately, have just a wee bit more curve around the middle. Still, at the time, I remained optimistic.

Weeks of knitting later I was finished and before figuring out if I wanted to do buttons, clasps, or a zipper to tie the piece together, I clipped it around my body to see how it would fit. My gauge was perfect, the yarn was super-soft, and the coloring worked well....the size around my middle....significantly less so. What I saw in the mirror not only didn't look deliciously cute but wasn't even the least bit flattering and so off to the back of my closet did the piece disappear for years to come.

I hadn't the heart to frog it since it was my first cardigan and on top of that, because the yarn was just so awesome, I couldn't bear to gift it to someone smaller than me. I already had to do THAT with the first sweater I ever knitted and giving my mom two knit garments in one summer because it didn't work with me seemed less than desirable. After all, she just might get a wee bit suspicious to the fact that the only reason she got knitted goods was because of my knitting failures.

Now to the present...after many years of that cardigan sitting in my closets, hidden away at the bottom of bins and moved around every year, I found it again last night in my hamper basket. I retried it on to see if maybe I lost weight to make it look good and realized that no matter how you cut it...a 30 inch just won't look good on my 38 inch hips. Just before I was about to banish it back to the knitting depths of my stash...I realized I never, ever blocked it. Huh...so today I dunked it in a Eucalan bath and stretched it out. The 30 inch waistline bloomed to a 39.5 inch waistline and I managed to stretch out the length to go at a very comfortable level to cover my hips. For realz? For realz.

So tomorrow I'm going to unpin the cardigan and take it to Joann Fabrics to see about getting a closure for it. Me thinks clasps or snap tape, after all, I've got a 50% off coupon for Joann Fabrics that I can use.