The Six Million Dollar Cardigan

I was happy, I was thrilled, I was over the moon to be finally finishing the body of the fair isle cardigan I've been working on for the past 8 months. I was looking forward to starting the sleeves. That all changed last night when I finished the last round of the body and I went to join the front to back at the shoulder. And well, here look. Here is the left front

and here is a picture of the shoulder grafted together, something is not right here

Here is a closer look.
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Would this bother you? Because this bothers me, bothers me a lot. Why? Why, you ask? Because it didn't have to be this way. I was looking it over last night to see why the pattern didn't line up right. The problem is in the way the tube is divided. I can fix this, like the Six Million Dollar man, I could rebuild it, I could make it better, but to do this I would have to rip back to the armhole steeks, reposition the steeks so that the armhole steek is at the center of a block pattern and then decrease seven stitches on each side of the armhole, shaping the armhole. This will take out one block of the pattern and when I graft the shoulders the patterns will match up. There are a couple of advantages to this idea, one it will shape the armhole and narrow the shoulder seam and the sweater will be less boxy. Which isn't such a bad idea, because Caren has a smaller figure and we were a little concerned that the sweater was going to be a bit big. On the other hand this would mean unknitting hours of work. Each round took me about 20 minutes. It would probably push finishing this sweater off for another month of more.(on the other hand, it's taken this long what's another month or so?)
Here's my dilemma, it isn't a very obvious fault. It's the shoulder seam, most people looking at the sweater would never notice that the patterns do not match up, BUT (and here is where the OCD kicks in) I will , and I will know that I could have made this sweater a much better sweater, if I'd have taken the time to re-work it. So what do I do? I didn't think that this was a decision to be made at 1:30 am in the morning. I'm still on the fence. How crazy does this make me? Am I crazy enough to re-knit a third of the sweater just so the shoulder seams match up? Oh, I'm that crazy. Ask my sister who doesn't have her Christmas scarf from me because I unraveled it because I was unhappy with the way it was knit.

5 Opinions:

Anonymous said...

OK, I'm clueless...it looks beautiful to me!

renee said...

I had to really look and figure it out. I doubt anyone but you is ever going to notice it when you're actually wearing it. The sweater is gorgeous!!

Ani said...

ugh! mom, i told you, NO ONE WILL NOTICE, AND CAREN WON'T CARE!!! you are officially too much of a "obsessive perfectionist" right now! (not that i'm never, but we're not talking about me). it's fiiiiiiine. relax, you'll give yourself a gray hair. ^_^

- LisaD. said...

Kelle,
I have no thoughts or ideas on this as I am so not at your knitting level. (yet) But I do think this sweater is absolutely gorgeous! Are you feeling any better about it? I am an obsessive, compulsive perfectionist as well. It would never be a concern for anyone else that it doesn't match up....but you will always know...and that is gonna bug you. If you do decide to rip out, let me know and Amy and I will make sure to bring you some of those chocolate frogs so as to numb the pain of it a bit.

Shelly said...

I didn't see it right away--I think that it is soooo beautiful and that nobody would notice it, seriously.

Having said all of that, I am certain that I would also feel the way you do--that ripping it back would make you feel better, provided you didn't become totally disgusted with yourself about half-way through putting it all back together!

I vote LEAVE IT!