Sunday, August 20, 2006

It's Contest Time!

I think it’s about time to have another contest. Anyone up for it? Here are the details:

The Prize: A felted bag kit. The kit includes the Fearless Fibers yarn required to make the bag pictured below, although the colorway for the prize will not be the one in the photo. The colorway will be Stormy Night, pictured below the photo of the bag. The yarn in the kit is 8 ounces (325 yards) of worsted weight Mohair/Wool and 2 ounces (125 yards) of Small Loopy Mohair Boucle. The kit also includes the pattern for the bag.





The Deadline: Entries must be submitted before midnight on Monday August 28th. If you have a blog of your own, submit your entry by posting it on your blog and then submitting a comment here with a link to your entry. If you do not have your own blog, submit your entry directly into the Comments of this posting. Be sure to include your e-mail address when submitting Comments, so that I can get in touch with the winner. The winner will be announced on Wednesday August 30th.

Entry Requirements: To enter, submit a brief description of the dumbest mistake you’ve ever made in a knitting project. Entries will be judged by a good friend of mine who is an avid and experienced knitter and who does not know any of my readers. The winner will be the entry that she judges to be the best all-round stupid mistake, considering both the depth of the stupidity and any extra considerations, such as the funniest or most unusual knitting mistake among the entries.

So come on folks – it’s time to fess up to those embarrassing boo-boos! To get the ball rolling, I’ll tell you about one of my own that comes to mind.

A year or so ago, I knit a summer sweater of cotton/rayon ribbon, slightly cropped for a just-to-the-waist length, in stockinet combined with a thick band of embossed seed stitch diamonds around the bodice, with a zip-front closure. Since this was a sweater of my own design, I had no pattern to help protect me from my own stupidity.

I knit the back first and then moved on to the front right-side and finished that. I then moved on to the front left-side. I got about halfway through before I realized that I was knitting another right-side instead of a left-side. Sigh. Frog. Frog. Sigh.

I began again with the front left-side, shaking my head and tut-tutting myself for my stupidity. This time, I completed the ENTIRE second front side before I realized that I had done it again! I then had two entirely completed right sides.

Yes, I’m an idiot.

Fess up! How dumb are you?

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

hahahah! this is NOT pointing and laughing—it's just laughing!

mjm knitting said...

Hi there i just found your blog from the knittyboard coffeeshop.

I want to enter your contest for the felted bag kit. My entry can be found at mjmknitting.blogspot.com

Thank you

ikkinlala said...

I have nothing to compare to your story, fortunately. The worst I've done so far is to ignore a dropped stitch until I was done the scarf - and then later find the whole thing sitting there unravelled. [Fill in profanity of choice] cat!

LadyLungDoc said...

My entry
It's down at the bottom of the post.

sheep#100 said...

I was knitting a sweater for my child. Liked the pattern. Wanted to upsize it to fit me. Knew the gauge from the first one - was using same yarn. Did calculations. Knit back and half of front before realizing that I made the calculations based on the gauge of the Stockinette swatch, not based on the gauge of the pattern stitch.

The sweater was given to a 12 y/o as a Christmas present.

Anonymous said...

I'm the only one without a blog! Boo.

My entry is the dreaded begginners mistake of believing gauge isn't important. I started the SnB Marsupial Tote without checking gauge... I just picked a yarn similar to the suggested that I really liked and the recommended needles. If you're not familiar, for this pattern you knit the bottom a certain number of rows, pick up stitches and then knit a certain number of inches to make the bag the proper size.

I knit the bottom and thought, "Gosh, this looks really small. I know, I'll just knit more rows until I like it and then I'll pick up the stitches." So I did that and then knit up the whole bag as big as it's supposed to be, knowing it looks really weird and hoping it will just magically get better. It didn't. I ended up with this weird long, skinny tube of a tote. These are the opposite proportion the tote is supposed to be.

Luckily, I didn't take my bad knitting denial to the end and actually felt it, but I still haven't frogged it a year later. I think it's a good reminder to check gauge!

Anonymous said...

Well okay then, I'm in. See tale of woe on my blog.

lissa said...

I knit a sweater for my husband not to long ago. It was knit in the round with steeks for the arm and neck holes. I used the crochet method of securing the steeks. I crocheted up one side of what was to become the neck hole, and down the other. It was secure and ready for cutting. All I had to do was very carefully cut down the center. Instead I very carefully cut to the left of both lines of crochet. The result was pretty much what you would expect when cutting into knitted fabric, lots of little ends sticking out, lots of knitting to redo.

I hope I explaind that so that it makes sense.

Unknown said...

Nice to know that I am not the only one who does this sort of thing!

I am a new enough knitter that I don't have any collosal mistakes - just medium sized mistakes at an alarming frequency.

I once made a pair of baby booties that could fit a nine year old because I didn't check gauge. I'm currently working on basket weave throw that I had to restart three times because I couldn't figure out how to cast on stitches in a multiple of four. Sigh, it's not a good sign if you can't even handle counting.

Anonymous said...

I made my first sweater using the wrong wieght of yarn, while trying to make up for the gauge difference i did my math wrong when shaping the neck. after finishing i noticed it was a little small. i figured it will stretch, no problem. WRONG, i forced it over my head and could not for the life of me force it back off. i ended up have to unravel the entire sweater while wearing it, as not to ruin perfectly good yarn. so here i sit in my study covered in a pile yarn with a ball winder. needless to say, that is 2 and a half hours i shall never get back. but for all you wondering, the yarn is ok.

Anonymous said...

I knit a tiny green cotton baby sweater from the bottom up, and decided to use drop shoulders and pick up stitches around the armholes later to knit the arms from the body out.

Except when I got to where I should have divided for the armholes... I didn't. I just kept going and even started to seam the shoulders before I realised... all the babies I know have arms. And of course it was cotton so I couldn't even steek them. Oh my shame...

Anonymous said...

Oooooh...mylilpenguin's GOT to win! The visuals are outstanding!

Anonymous said...

here you go deb, my dumbest mistake: http://knitspot.com/?p=240
and did i mention i ran out of bandwidth today?? yah—that may rival the dumbest mistake ever . . .

Anonymous said...

ok, deb, here is an update on my entry for the dumbest knitting mistake EVER:
first, i entered the moth shawl race. i mean. huh?? and then, i was hell-bent on using this certain yarn from my stash that was the perfect mothy dusty blue. so intent in fact, that i did not measure the yardage.

i eyeballed it. i vaguely remember counting the yards about 6 months ago,and was sure i remembered i had enough. now i am about 20 rows from the end, and i have about 6 rows-worth of yarn.

i COULD get some more yarn. that is,i could IF i lived in paris, and this was 5 years ago, and not now!! this yarn does not even have a label.

totally beginner dumb-ass error. NOT a mistake, deb—a complete failure of judgement. i have some other of the same yarn in a different color. i might try to make that work, but i doubt it will. are moths striped?? heh, i didn't think so.

some should really strip me of my license to teach knitting . . .
read me tomorrow to see what i ended up doing . . .