Happier Finished Object

Before:

After:

In Spring 2007, I was really happy to find out I won a cover kit from Knit.1 Magazine. Cotton-ease had just been re-released, although I hadn't been knitting long enough to have been among the disappointed when they stopped selling it. I got a box full of Lake so I could make Helen Hamann's Hooded Tunic from the section on yoga style. Yay! Of course this was certainly a major undertaking, early on, with only one project, Tank Girl, close to the same scale behind me. But it was a simple project, which is one thing I really loved about Knit.1 simple projects with a lot of style. I still haven't recovered from the news that they aren't making any more issues. But at least they went out with a bang, the last two issues were amazing!

It took me ages. I managed to tote it along on a cross-country road trip, from Seattle to Colorado, and back, and it still wasn't done when I got home. I hit bumps along the way, stopped for a bit here and there, having lost my motivation. It took me about a year to actually finish it. And when I did, I just wasn't thrilled, as you can tell from the before pictures!

At some point I shoved it into a bag in the closet, thinking eventually I'd do something to fix it. Well, I finally did yesterday. This involved unraveling the bottom band I was never pleased with, it turned out floppy and weird. I suppose initially, and part of the reason I set it aside for so long, is that I was thinking I would re-do that band, and since I hadn't had much luck with it the first time, I wasn't very interested in trying again and possibly still failing. Over time I considered what to do with it...deciding that though I like the orginal design, it may not be quite right for me, at least not at the length I ended up with. The idea of sort of stepping into this garment...I dunno.

So I started my revisions yesterday simply thinking about that bottom band. But after frogging, Chuck commented it looked better but it's still very long. So I started playing around with it. More frogging would have been too much, the body came first, and the band of ribbing, including the hood, I believe would have had to have been frogged too. I was too happy with how that hood came out (my first and only so far!) to do that. So I started playing with, realizing that if I sort of hemmed it up, I could give myself some inside pockets.

I like it so much better now. Easy to throw on, more flattering on me, it just seems so much more useful than it did. I may try to add some kind of closure to it, something small like a series of hook and eye clasps. But at this point it feels much more ready to wear than it did. I'm very glad I finally got a happy ending out of this project, even if it took 3 years to get there!