Tedium and Pointlessness

I've just recently finished knitting a sleevless dress shell out of this beautiful blue acryllic yarn. The finished product is absolutely beautiful. It's sparkly, it fits well, and it's in a color that looks good on me. I worked the whole thing in the round until I got to the armholes, so with the exception of the shoulders, there are no seams. My favorite kind of project.

I wore it for the first time the day after I finished it. It looked well, but I noticed that it didn't hang completely straight in the back around the armholes. The way the pattern had indicated to make a selvage here was causing the edging to roll in on itself slightly.

No problem, I thought to myself. This will all be fixed when I block it. This is where I began to realize that I didn't particularly enjoy the project as I had originally. It's acryllic, which means that it has to be wet-blocked, and it's hand-wash only. Still, I tell myself that it's no big deal. I wash the thing and lay it out carefully, pinning it with the exact dimensions I want it.

And there it lay all weekend, drying into place like it was supposed to. Finally on Monday evening, I unpinned it and looked at it. It looked great. It was the right size. I was even able to fix a little pucker in the stitches that had occurred when I picked up the stitches for the neck. I was pleased.

And then, I put it on. At first, I didn't realize anything was amiss. Until I was at work. And I realized that despite the fact that I had followed the pattern exactly the whole way, the bloomin selvage was STILL rolling in at the armholes, meaning that it STILL was not hanging straight in the back. Moreover, in my attempt to block the armholes correctly, I had inadvertently increased the sizes slightly, causing the back to hang even less straight than it had originally.

I am ticked. I am annoyed. I am ready to curse the knitting gods. I just wasted an entire weekend doing a step on this particular piece that I didn't even have to do, because it was done in all one piece, and it turned out to be a huge colossal waste of time.

I hate blocking.