Sweater, You Will Not Defeat Me!

I had several ideas for the title of the post. "Kill Me Now!" was at the top of my list followed by "Don't Do This At Home", "What Was I Thinking?", and the ever popular "How Dumb Am I?". The one I chose fits it the best. Last night, Robyn and I started unraveling our sweaters. We talked of the grand plans we had for all of the wonderful yarn we would have when we were done. NOT. This was a big fail as far as I am concerned. It took forever to take apart the seams and begin the unraveling part. Robyn's yarn was so thin. It looked like several strands had been knitted together or it had been so loosely plied that it separated in the unraveling. I could not find the strand to start the process. I fiddled with it until Robyn declared "Uncle" to her sweater. I packed mine in as well, disappointed in the whole process. I had a back and two sides and no balls of yarn in sight.

Before I went to bed, I started thinking. What if I was trying to start the unraveling at the bind off edge instead of the cast on edge? I assumed that the sweater had been knit from the bottom up, not the shoulders down and I just kept on trying to get it to work. This morning I began anew. I am taking care of the puppies next door, so I brought my stuff over to work on while I sat out on their wonderful screened in porch. The puppies had lots of outside time and I found some reward. It was knit from the shoulders down and I was just spinning my wheels last night.

This is the unraveling in process. I started with the back which was an excellent idea. It gave me the most bang for my time spent and left me with quite a bit of yarn. The yarn itself has a metallic thread running through it, or so I thought. I think in reality it was two fibers knit together because the metallic part just is a mess when unraveled. It breaks and separates into two pieces. I will go back and take that stuff out. I thought it would be nice to have the metallic for a shawl or something, but it is way too much of a pain.

Here is all of the yarn from the back. Not bad really, but when you take into account how much time I have into this, then not so much. I started on one of the sides. There the yarn was not so great in that I had lots of little balls from the shaping of the neck, sleeves, and sides. I finally quit when I had 3 small sized balls worth saving(and those were the biggest of the balls) and decided it was not worth it to struggle with the sides. There were pockets lower down and that would have made even more chopped up yarn.

After I finish taking out all of the metallic junk, I will measure it, wash it, and re-skein the whole enchilada. Oh joy!