The Boy Who Loved Tigers

Somewhere, in the wilds of the jungle of the suburbs outside of Chicago, there lived a Boy Who Loved Tigers.


He slept in tiger pjs with numerous tiger stuffed animals and his plastic tiger flashlight.

Okay, so first a little story about the flashlight. I got those for the kids last month when we had a friend visiting. They were playing with them outside for a few minutes, when the little five-year-old-man came up to me and asked "Mommy, did you buy these, (pause, thinking) or did you make them?"

Awwwww!

Okay, on with the knitting content.

I've shown you the tiger sweater. I haven't been forthcoming about the "situation" I had with the armholes. I was knitting happily away, concentrating on the intarsia rows, when I blew by the armhole decrease. I discovered it about an inch and a half later, of course, as soon as I was done with the intarsia and I came up for air. I decided that I couldn't face ripping back that many intarsia rows, so I decided to do the decrease right then.

Then, in bonehead move #2, I knit several more rows before I remembered to decrease on the other side.



Here's the difference, a little more obvious, in the blocking photo:


My plan was, adventurous steeker that I am, to sew down and across the little corner flap that shouldn't be there, and cut it off. Easy peasey. After all, this is a child's garment. A boy's sweater, no less, who will probably wear it once, and it's on the inside of the armhole, where the only person who might ever see it would be a museum curator who uncovers it from an archeological dig in the year 3005, and that knowledgeable curator would probably say "look at that clever woman who made a mistake in the armhole decreasing and fixed it by sewing and cutting."

Unfortunately, what seemed like a fantastic idea in the heat of the moment, was looking less than brilliant the morning after. Ugh. I have to set up my sewing machine and re-thread it with red thread for cryin out loud. It just seemed like such a chore. So I procrastinated the appropriate time frame.

Then, realizing that my son wasn't getting any younger and my lovely tiger armholes weren't going to unravel and re-knit themselves, I got down to it.

Here I am marking the area with straight pins and sewing:


Here I have cut the area away:


Feeling quite cocky after that procedure, I decided to do a little surgery on some nearby ends, by sewing 1/2 stitch in, and whacking those suckers off. I did that for four ends.


Yeah, like I'm going to notice the difference between weaving in 180 ends, and weaving in 184 ends.


Now, if you measure carefully, sew carefully, and cut carefully, after you sew the arm into the new armhole and sew down the side seam, your stripes will line up perfectly.



I said, "your stripes will match up PERFECTLY".

Crap.

To be continued.