Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Ooops du Jour! Finished!


The Ooops du Jour is finally finished and made its debut today (thank goodness it was cool and somewhat rainy out...maybe not so much for the pictures as for the fact that I could actually wear a sweater in August!). The Ooops has had a history, actually, and started it’s existence as the Scoop du Jour from Chic Knits. I found the yarn at a craft store of all places (but then again, in my town there’s only one, very tiny, LYS) and fell in love with the stretch, slightly shiny, totally chocolate aspect of it.

I wanted it in a nice cardigan with a modern, sort of boxy shape. Something you could wear over your bikini when the air gets a little cool at night while you’re lying on the pool deck (okay, so this never happens, but that’s the “feel” I wanted). I searched high and low for a great pattern and found the Scoop.

Loved the design, ordered it, and began whipping it up. I love the design, but there were things about the pattern writing I didn't love, and it was just plain irritating to follow at times. Times like decreasing the armholes---you go through this rhythm of decreases for a while, and then you get this, “oh, and by the way, you should have been counting rows all along because now you need to get to XX number of rows since the beginning of the decreases.” What?! If I wanted to go back and count rows, I could just make this up myself! Grrr....as if she couldn’t have just said something like, “knit X (X, X, X) more rows even,” and saved her knitter having to break out of the forging-ahead rhythm.

Anyway, as I was going along with the back, the front panels, and almost through the first arm, I noticed something strange...I didn’t have enough yarn! Agggh! I thought for SURE I’d bought much, more than enough (because I was planning to make something else with it, too) but couldn’t find it in my knitting bag, basket, backpack, under the seat of my car, in my desk drawer at work...nothing! Gone!

So I decided to step back and rework. I thought about it and decided I could fashion the Scoop du Jour into an elbow-sleeve pullover instead of a long-sleeved cardigan. Voila! For fun, I started calling it the “Ooops” du Jour. It worked out pretty well, the ripping went fast and after some figuring on the arms, I got them at just the right spots with enough ribbing to balance everything out and make it look “on purpose.” And that’s just about the exact moment when....you guessed it! I found the rest of my yarn! Yeah...fate can just go screw itself.


I honestly took a look at frogging the whole thing out again and doing the cardigan, but I started really falling in love with the Ooops. I think I actually like it just as well, if not better, and the shape and sleeve length work really well in my wardrobe. So, the Ooops is a hit! Oh, and I got a great compliment within an hour of donning it: I was at the coffee shop this morning (of course!) to get my morning latte and as I was walking out, my friend (and bridesmaid) was walking in. “Oh, wow! LOVE your sweater!” she says, and she didn’t even know I was knitting it. Thank God I didn’t get the dreaded, “Oh....did you make that?”

3 comments:

Carolyn said...

Absolutley lovely...and tres chic!
I think this design looks better than the original pattern may have. (From your description anyway!) The hair looks great btw...How do you feel about the change?
As always thanks for the inspiration!

Gina said...

The Ooops is an Oolala!
When you are ready to start designing, I'm ready to start test knitting. And once we win the lottery, we can run Pilates/Knitting Retreats!

Anna said...

I love my new hair, except that taking all the weight off the bottom has made is so curly and bouncy. I'm not used to all the bounciness.