Thursday, April 12, 2012

I'm Gonna Do It!

Well Shannon from luvinthemommyhood and Becca from Nook. have spun up a new knit along (haha, did you catch my pun, totally intentional).  I was sooooo excited to find out about it and waited on needles with a cable hook to find out what we were going to be knitting next.  I confess I was hoping it would be shawls as I just got some ah.maz.ing Madelinetosh yarn that is crying to be knit up into a shawl.  However it wasn't.  If I'm totally honest I was a little let down by the choice as *gasp* it was something I'm nervous to make.  What is it that we're making?  Tops, Tanks & Tees...well really the and should be or unless you're a crazy fast knitter who could make more than one garment in a month.

In spite of my fear of knitting a top for myself I knew I had to join in.  I have loved these online KALs so much.  The conversations on ravelry, the different patterns, the different yarn and best of all the encouragement and accountability to actually finish what you start (a serious problem of mine, not finishing).  I started my pattern search by diving into my pattern collection.  I've only been knitting for 6 years but boy oh boy do I have a lot of patterns.  I'm a knitting magazine junkie!  I weeded out the patterns by only looking for magazines that were the Spring/Summer editions and found a mag that had tons of summer top patterns that I loved and would happily make.

Yet I've been conditioned to be cautious about magazine patterns.  Especially if the models of said patterns are small and twig like in stature.  So I picked my top three pattern choices and went to ravelry to look them up, see who had made them, if there were problems with the pattern, but most importantly to see if anyone of my build and fat content had made one and looked good in it.  I'm so glad I did because when I entered in one of my tank choices a little thumbnail picture popped up as a possible suggestion and I fell head over heels in love with it.

Frantically I searched to see if the pattern had been knit by someone my size...it had and she looked AMAZING in it.  Then I noticed that the pattern was from an old Vogue mag...2008.  I wasn't too disappointed as I could buy just that pattern but I remembered that my bestie subscribes to Vogue Knitting, maybe she had a copy of the magazine so that I could borrow it.  She did!  Oh victory oh victory!  The next best part is that I had yarn in my stash for it.  So I'm out $0 for the KAL a fact that husband is grateful for.  Well grateful for now, because as I'm using up my stash soon I'll have to actually go out and buy yarn and the longer I knit the more expensive my yarn tastes get :)

The KAL runs April 11 thru May 23, which is 6 weeks a perfect amount of time for a top.  Especially since I've gone and changed the gauge from 5 stitches to the inch to 7 stitches to the inch.  I had to cast on 252 stitches and I'll work a K2P2 rib for 13 inches!  I timed myself...it takes me 11 minutes to work one round!  Still I know I'll love having this in a finer gauge, it will add to the drape and look more professional in my opinion.

So what do you think?  Do you love the pattern?  The yarn is discontinued now but it was given to me and you just can't beat free!  Stay tuned for more progress :)

3 comments:

  1. So glad you're joining in Buffy <3

    ReplyDelete
  2. me too! this is already such an active kal! xo

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks ladies! I'm still nervous but excited...already have almost 2 inches!

    ReplyDelete

I love to hear from you! Really I do. It brightens my day when you comment so please don't be shy and tell me what you think...come back too because I try really hard to reply to your comments here. Thanks again for stopping by.