It's like having deja vu all over again.

Do you ever find yourself making the same mistakes over and over again? I don't know if I'm a slow learner, lazy, suffering from mommy brain, or all of the above. In any case, lately I have most definitely not been learning from my mistakes.


Case in Point #1: The Too Big Sweater

A big part of the reason that I bought Tricotez Calin was for the cover sweater. In particular, I love the large garter section on the sleeves. It just has that simple, cute, je ne sais quoi, thing going for it.

Actually, this sweater almost wasn't made at all because when I looked at the directions, I only saw the top part, la brassiere, which is sized up to 6 months. Then, after complimenting Aimee on hers and bemoaning the sizes being too small, she politely informed me that the second option (visible right under la brassiere), le pull, was sized 12/18 months (aka the perfect Winter size for Baby Girl).

This habit of not looking carefully enough at the directions would come back to haunt me later when I realized (way too late) that proportionally speaking, the garter section on the 12/18 month size is much smaller than on the other sizes.

Oh, and also, I ignored gauge.

So, the mistakes in this sweater were: not looking at the pattern closely enough, ignoring gauge, and not looking at the pattern closely enough.

Case in Point #2: The Baby Toys

I don't put away the baby toys at night. Or at least, I don't put them all away all of the time. It's usually more like I put some of them away sometimes.

This one, though, is the one I know I have to watch out for. That's because this puzzle has a light-detecting sensor. Every time your little one gets the right animal in the right place, you get to hear said animal's noise. Or, if you don't put all the pieces away, leaving the board uncovered, once you turn out the lights at night, you will hear a cacophony of farm animals. Worse, if you did that and then forgot, went to bed, and woke up thirsty in the middle of the night, you will turn the lights on and think you were in the middle of a barn instead of the living room.

Case in Point #3: The Sweater with the Million Stitch Cast On

Right after I finished the Too Big Sweater, I cast on for a sweater for myself. I'd been going back and forth for a long time about which sweater I wanted to knit from Rowan Denim People. I love Bestitched's Saffy, but I also love Jen's Bomber. I was conflicted for a long time.

So, since they have the same gauge, I went ahead and swatched a while back and determined my needle size for the pattern (US 5). Since I was a little disappointed with the Too Big Sweater and I had already determined that I was on gauge, I went ahead and starting casting on for Saffy w/out looking at the pattern. I cast on about 75 sts on my US 5 straight needles, then looked at the pattern. It said to "Cast on 337 sts". I had my doubts about fitting that many stitches onto straight needles, but I kept right on casting and smashing those stitches together until I had the right number. Then, I looked at the pattern again. "Cast on 337 sts using US 3 needles." Woops.

You'd think I'd have learned my lesson about not reading the pattern from the Too Big Sweater. I mean, there wasn't even anything on my needles between this two. Oh well. I decided to leave it as is.

Oh, and making a late entry... Case in Point #4: Trusting blogger.