Let’s start with the happy news, shall we? I finished the Teddy Sweater in no time and it’s soooo adorable! It was such a lovely thing to knit, partly because of the pattern (well written, easy to follow, enough variation to keep things interesting) and partly because of the yarn (Malabrigo Arroyo is so lovely, I’ll definitely be using it again). I don’t even think I have much more to say about this FO, because I think these picture do pretty much all the talking. Cute, soft, fast, perfect.

Now let’s look at the opposite of this, the Safran cardigan I’m working on. It’s a teeny tiny baby cardigan but it’s already 1 month past cast-on now. I do have a lot of love for the project, but the colourwork was fidgety, the tiny sleeves with colourwork were fidgety squared. And in the end I was avoiding the project because I was avoiding my first ever steek, with good reason apparently.

See, when making decisions for this project I wanted to do it all, cute pattern, wearable cardigan, soft yarn, machine washable yarn, and because it was such a small project I wanted to try a new technique. Of course all of this is feasible but the most deadly mistake I made here; using superwash yarn, which I chose for many of the above reason.

When securing the stitches for the steek with a crochet method I was so relieved at how easy it was. When cutting the steek I was so relieved how easy it was. When noticing the first stitches slipping out of their secured position, well.. let’s just say the neighbours heard a lot of swearing that evening.

I steeked, I failed. The yarn is too slippery and simply will not hold. The stupid thing is I KNEW not to use slippery yarn, I did actually do my homework. But along the way factoring everything in I forgot I guess.

The good news? First of all the colourwork looks pretty neat on the inside doesn’t it? The fabric is actually really lovely after washing. Also, I think this might be salveagable. The current plan is to carefully bring the cardigan to my grandmother and have her machine sew over the edges a couple of gazzilion times. It won’t look nearly as neat finished as the pretty yellow crochet version I was going for, but I think it might actually hold (fingers crossed). As I’m leaving for the States tomorrow morning though it’ll have to wait until I’m back from my trip. I stored it away safely, so as long as the elves don’t stop by at night and start pulling it it should be fine.

And I guess if it won’t hold and it truly and completely fails, I will have learned a very valuable lesson about steeking.