Audrey A-Long

Ho finito l'Audrey!!

Excerpts from my September 12, 2004, entry at my blog appear below:
After a wrangle with the neckband, I plowed on through until morning so that Audrey could be put to bed, or on a Vespa as the case may be.

It's harder than it looks to copy someone else's photograph. But your very own Vespa helps.

I first attached the neckband after a mindnumbing 28 repeats. Why so many, you ask? Well, I, being the novice sewer-upper that I am, wrongly assumed that I would need as many repeats as would fit around the neck of the sweater I had stitched together. Never mind that people like Jenny had already mentioned on the Audrey-along site that she had used a mere 18 repeats. So I just ignored that somewhere I had heard of a much smaller number. "That couldn't be right," I thought. "Look how small that is!!" Boy, am I stubborn. When I sewed it together, it looked great! Except for the fact that it hung off my shoulders as if Daisy Duke herself had custom made it for me. It was downright obscene. I knew I had done something wrong then. And only after I had made this mistake did I think to look to see what others before me had done. Duhhhrrrr.

Sooooooo, rather than get discouraged, I unraveled my seam, unraveled about ten repeats on the neckband, bound it off again and reattached it. To sew it together using mattress stitch: I stitched one stitch under a knit stitch on the sweater side, one stitch on a thread of the neck band edge, then one knit stitch again on sweater side, then back to the neck band edge, and then on the sweater side again, swooped up two purl stitches at once, hoping to make the ribbing closer together at the neck edge. The ribbing did draw together nicely, though I'm not sure if what I did will one day lead to nasty holes in the neck edge since every third stitch is twice as long. I guess time will tell!!

Once attached, thanks to guidance from the Audrey bloggers (thank you, blogsters, for the "search" option!!), I had a neckline that neither gaped nor slid down my upper arms obscenely. No, no, it sits placidly on my shoulders as if to say, "C'mon, ride the Vespa at 55 mph and see if I budge."

I've learned so much from doing this sweater, as I do from every experience. Radio money advisor, Dave Ramsay, calls stupid financial mistakes "tuition to Life University" or the "stupid tax." I call these mess-ups "knitting lessons." Hopefully, I'll learn that the next time I have to make a neckband, it doesn't have to match the hole in width. In fact, it should be made to match my NECK!! What a concept!! The hole can be sewn to a much shorter band, thereby making it FIT!!

I'm very pleased to have been allowed to participate with such a vivacious and knowledgeable group of knitters. What a blessing this blog has been! Thanks so much to everyone and I look forward to seeing more finished Audreys in the months to come!

Now, bring on the label!!

Posted by RachelE at September 12, 2004 01:26 PM