Godot's Sweater - A Knitwizard

When I think about having to wait for a long time to get something, or do something, I’m reminded of Beckett’s play, Waiting for Godot. As I remain a child at heart, my impatience is always getting the better of me. I start the day saying, “today, I’ll finish the sweater!” At the end of the day I’m convinced that Godot will probably come tomorrow. The length of time it took me to finish Bruce’s sweater puts me in mind of the play….maybe tomorrow it will be done.

Tomorrow DID finally come, and here is Bruce’s sweater, my design, and knit in Swedish wool that I brought back from our first trip there.

This sweater was not worked out from a pattern, but was based solely on his measurements and some ideas I wanted to try. It is knit from the bottom up, in the round to the armhole, and then the sleeves were picked up once the body was complete. It was a simplified idea without a curved armhole (like a dropped sleeve).

The deep ribbing, done with two colors for the hem and sleeve cuffs, was a broken rib that I did having the inside facing out for more texture. The two colors came from the fact that I didn’t have enough of either grey for a whole sweater (I loved the added challenge). I then carried the ribbed stitches to the yoke (extra insurance against running out of yarn), and finished with antique glass buttons with a matte finish.

I think that some of my design-on-the-fly ideas often turn out better than those that have been scrupulously planned and charted. In fact, while I did rip back some parts of the sweater and redo, my more thoroughly designed sweaters often have more rip-backs than those that are done more haphazardly. Right now I’m just getting started on one of the more “designed” type — a longish drape-front cardigan that is composed of multiple reversible knit and purl patterns to create a changing landscape of texture for an otherwise simple, single color singles yarn.

This shows a small section of the cardigan back from the left edge (green line) to the beginning of the left armscye (dark grey stepped stitches). In this iteration, the charting at the top hasn’t been completed, but it gives the idea of the complexity of the knit and purl patterns. Charting was necessary because the diagonal pattern extends onto the fronts, and I want to make sure that the joins at the seams are a perfect continuation of the design.

Several of the Shibui Birch colors. My choice for the cardigan is the pale cafe crema in the upper left corner.

I fell in love with this Shibui yarn (Birch) just as the company decided it should be discontinued (of course), and because I was fearful that I wouldn’t have enough, bought all remaining skeins from my Local Yarn Store when it went on sale. I likely have enough yarn to outfit the neighborhood!

The other “issue” with this yarn is that because it is singles (rather than plied) I hadn’t properly taken into account the tendency of singles to “pill” when used in a sweater. My theory here is that because I’ve chosen really dense (small) patterns, there is a limit on the surface area exposed to abrasion, so hopefully pilling won’t be a problem.

This sweater has a provisional cast on to enable working the icord binding in an unbroken line one row below the first knitted row. Shown here as well are the border rosette stitch, the beginning of the diagonal that will extend from the lower right hem to the left armscye, and a double moss as the main ground stitch below and to the left of the diagonal stitch.

Meanwhile…

I’m continuing to knit swatches and test yarns for the book as well as working on the text. I just did the first draft of my vocabulary list (Swedish/English knitting terms). It’s hard to stop! Even with my list, it’s no straightforward matter to translate a Swedish knitting pattern. Like my own designs, I tend to use the Swedish patterns as a springboard, and it’s very satisfying when they turn out looking mostly like the pictures.

Meanwhile…

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