Our county fair was this weekend.  It’s a lot of fun.  We all three enter something so we can get exhibitor passes which allow us to go in and out all weekend.  David entered a photograph, Davey an awesome dinosaur Lego sculpture, and I had my knitting.

This year, I entered the sweater I made for Davey.

I have not made many sweaters and I think the assembly can be tricky to pull off.  While not perfect by any means, I had thought it went pretty well over all.

So I have to admit that I was a little disappointed to see a red ribbon.  Not that there is anything wrong with that, but I’d worked so hard on the sweater!  I’d hoped for more. It kind of bugged me, and I was looking forward to seeing the critique when I went to pick it up last night.  I had a feeling that the problems might be in the finishing, and it turns out I was correct.  Although I did not anticipate what I’d done (not done rather).

The critique read:  “Finishing ends is just as important as the outside.”

Sure – I couldn’t agree more!  As I read that, I thought, “gosh, I must not have trimmed my carefully woven in ends close enough.”  So I turned my sweater inside out, and here is what I saw:

Unwoven ends.  Not only was one not woven in, it was somehow attached on both sides and needed to be clipped and woven in.

So that was embarrassing. However, I do feel lots better now that I think I understand what the major problem was.  When I finished the sweater early in the year, I had some moments of panic because when I blocked it, it had grown exponentially and was humongous.  In trying to repair that damage, I must have forgotten to go back and finish the INSIDE!

Ugh.  On the bright side, they liked my Wonder Woman Hat.

That’s a mistake I won’t make again.  I can already see myself obsessively checking for ends for years to come.

So I’ve started a new project. When I saw my sister a few weeks ago, she was working on an afghan which I really liked.  It’s a pattern called “Catch Some Waves“.

It’s going to take awhile to finish, but it’s a great pattern for peaceful knitting. The pattern is easily memorized, but it’s not completely mindless so I don’t get bored knitting it.

I am working from leftover yarns from my stash, and it makes me feel great to know that I will be using some of it up!