The 90 Minute Shirt ... Lesson

Last week on Facebook, I posted that the baby doesn't have much in the way of t-shirts for the summer. Since the budget is a little tight right now, I thought of this tutorial from Dana of MADE and figured since I have saved a few old t-shirts, I should be able to make some of these shirts for my big-headed little guy for next to nothing.

My first attempt:

To be fair, I didn't have an envelope shirt I was happy about cutting up, so I tried to make the pattern without cutting one up. My failure to follow instructions properly should in no way reflect upon Dana's fabulous tutorial(s). I definitely think this is a pattern failure and if I head back to the drawing board on the pattern, I should be able to fix it up for next time.

So, someone had posted a quote on Facebook this morning saying something about a mistake is only a mistake if you don't learn anything from it, otherwise it's a lesson. So, this is my lesson. Follow the instructions! (sigh) When will I learn this? On the plus side, I didn't spend anything on fabric. I cut up an old t-shirt of Dan's and an old tank top of mine (for the ribbing). The tank top ribbing was a little loosey-goosey so that probably didn't help the situation, but I don't think having a tighter rib would have fixed the pattern issue. I will try one of these again, but I'll have to have a pattern re-do.

In which I fail at knitting mittens

So, I was going to knit Z some mittens to match her new hat, which conveniently matches her coat. I'm new to knitting mittens. I knit myself a pair and they're falling apart because I just tried to get away with tying the yarns together and cutting them instead of weaving in all the ends. That was dumb.

Anyway, this is a brand new fail. I tried to knit these mittens on 2 needles and just seam up the sides. I can totally do this in crochet, but I like knit mittens because they use less yarn and they're not as holey as crochet mittens, so they can be a little warmer. Look how nasty the seam on the side is. Yuck. And they don't have a nice cute shape or anything. Now that I have one mitten, I have no desire to make the other one equally as ugly.

Incidentally, I used this basic mitten pattern formula. I do not think it's the fault of the pattern formula at all. Perhaps it was just the combination of yarn and size of mitten and my newbie mitten knitting skills and not knitting it in the round...

(sigh) What do I do now? Crochet a pair?