FO Friday -- Bonfire Edition!

I must say, I have NEVER been so beside-myelf-excited about the completion of a project before.  And here it is.  Ta Da!

It really is pretty.  And when I picked the pattern up almost a year (!) ago, I knew I was in a little bit over my head.  Not many folks had knitted it yet, and even fewer had finished it.  But what the heck, I thought as I dove in.  I made some mistakes early on that resulted in some frustration and some frogging, but once I got going, I was all excited and hopeful.  The trouble was, the farther I got, the worse it went.

The bottom line is, I just hate this pattern.  The designer creates some truly beautiful sweaters, and other folks don't seem to have this much trouble.  Go figure.  But the pattern wasn't cheap, and it was 14 pages long, which seems sort of silly.  And when I printed it out, I found that every single page contained an ad for the designer's web site, which was annoying, but whatever.  Then page 13 -- a full page ad.  Really?  Embedded in the pattern I just paid you for?  So glad I wasted ink to print that out.  Grrr.

The second major annoyance was that even with 13 pages of pattern, I had to write out the instructions by hand -- row by row -- in order to make any sense of several of the sections.  It's convoluted and unnecessarily complicated, which probably bugs me more than most since I used to write really good instructions for a living in a former life.

The third major annoyance was that the pattern, at least for my size, was FULL of errors.  I had to stop and count, and tink and fiddle at least three or four different times times only to find that the mistake wasn't mine, it was the designer's.  Curiously, there were no typos at all in any of the ads.  Another grrrr.

Finally, even though my gauge swatch was spot on, this thing is miles too big.  Granted, I've lost almost 30 pounds since I started it, but even 30 pounds ago, the bottom would've been too big.  See?

So now, all that work and all that yarn will be going to a lovely lady from my lunchtime knitting group.  Because it fits her, and she looks fabulous in it.  In return, she's offered to buy the yarn for my next sweater.  I'm pretty excited about this part, and counting on you all to help me pick the pattern.  We'll do that in the next couple of weeks.

Anyway, back to the evil pattern at hand.  With all of these difficulties and a year of frustration, I decided there was only one thing to do.  This:

Yay, fire!


I can't tell you how completely satisfying this was, and how I wish all of you had been there to experience it with me.  We could've toasted marshmallows and sung Kumbaya!

Thanks for hanging with me through this epic dredge of a project!  I swear the next one will have a happier ending, mostly because the pattern is by Ysolda Teague, who's brilliant and lovely and writes patterns that are elegantly constructed and crystal clear that turn into beautiful sweaters when all is said and done.  Hooray!

Once you've properly recovered from the shock of my impromptu pattern flambé, go check out the rest of the FO Friday posts -- lots of beautiful stuff, though I think this might be the only bonfire...

PS.  I'm linking up to Fiber Arts Friday for the first time today, too.  Even more fun!