A second sweater has gone into time out. At the moment, I don’t have the heart to rip it back (each row took a long time, so this 14″ long piece represents many hours of knitting).
When I realized that I had been zipping along and was now way off in the stitch count for the center lace panel, I put it aside to wait for a day before tracing the error back to its occurrence. It took me most of a day to trace back about 3″ to two rows; one with a dropped stitch, and one where I had split a stitch and created two stitches from one. While I’m often able to drop down to the mistake and fix the problem, the latter will necessitate ripping back for sure, and I just can’t face it at the moment.
In sitting and thinking about what I’ve been doing recently, I realized that I wasn’t having fun knitting. That’s absolutely a bad thing. I had been pushing and pushing, first to finish socks, and then to get going on a sweater I was determined be ready for traveling in the fall. Both this and the one I reported on last post are patterns that I really like, and I didn’t want to end up with a WIP that would become a NFO (never finished object), taunting me from the “Time Out” basket.
I go through that basket whenever I finish a project, and try to put together enough enthusiasm to pull one out and get it finished. I came across two that I will probably finish in the next few weeks — a hat I was knitting with leftover yarn to go to a charity one of the Wednesday group knitters contributes to each year, and a scarf with no particular “destination”. The scarf had been commissioned by a shop for sale. The shop then disappeared, taking with it several others that had been sold but never paid for. Needless to say, that scarf was left unfinished because it gave me a bad feeling every time I looked at it. I’m over it, so I can finish it off for myself in a day or two, along with the hat, and feel a sense of accomplishment. Since both the scarf and hat will be given away to charity, all bad feelings will be turned to good.
Picking up these small projects has given me the opportunity to think more coherently about my relationship to knitting. I’m neither a slow, nor mindful knitter. Mindfulness implies an ability to quiet your mind…something I have a real problem doing. It’s one of the reason’s I’m unable to meditate.
Years ago in a yoga class, the session would end with a 15-minute relaxation/meditation, and it was always horribly difficult to keep myself from jumping up and screaming as my mind would conjure up at least a dozen reasons to “get on with it.”
For me, knitting is supposed to be both a relaxing activity and an opportunity for problem solving — something I enjoy. It works well unless I try to go too quickly, failing to follow instructions (even the ones I construct for myself with my own designs). I somehow lost the enjoyment part with both of the sweaters I was working on.
With few exceptions, I’m not a driven knitter either. I’ve been super-focused at times — like when I only had a month to design and execute a sweater to be submitted to a Vogue competition. But that was happy pressure I imposed upon myself. I made the deadline, but would not have beat myself up if I’d missed it. I didn’t think for a minute I’d win (the contest was open to both professional and non-professional knitters and the winners were totally outstanding).
For me winning was not the goal. I just wanted to see if I could meet all of the design challenges that were set out, and still like the finished product. My only dissatisfaction in the end was that since it had to be made in a small size, it didn’t fit me when it was done.
These wonderful Dorset buttons just arrived in yesterday’s mail. They are from the Etsy shop Bespoke Buttons, and I’m thrilled with them. Seven of them are destined for the red sweater when it re-emerges from Time Out. Their arrival almost has me pulling it out right now, but I don’t want to face the ripping out quite yet. One of my favorite things to do is use mis-matched buttons on sweaters. They make me smile!
So where does this leave me? At the moment, unsettled. I usually pick up socks when I’m “in between” and haven’t decided what to do next. That isn’t an option at the moment, since I’m all socked out. For the past two days I’ve done something simple-minded…adding a little length on the sweater I knit from my handspun.
It was pretty mindless — just extending the garter bottom at the lower edge. But it gave me the opportunity to knit without pressure, and finish (or re-finish) a project that I really love. With the addition of about 3″ of border, I’ve also used up almost every scrap of the handspun that went into this project.
Between de-stashing for my new friend Lydia (see my previous post), and gifting piles of yarn to the Wednesday knitting group, I’m feeling noticeably lighter. I still have too much yarn, but it no longer feels so oppressive. I have plans for much of what is left, and there really aren’t too many skeins that I “just can’t part with” that don’t have a specific associated plan. Stepping back from the way I’ve been knitting and looking at my knitting has been a very good thing. It has allowed me to think not only about what is important, but to let go of so much that has been cluttering my mind and my workspace.
Looking at my (still) impressive stash, I’m reminded of what a friend knitter (and designer) Amy Herzog once said about having a stash. She doesn’t have one at all. She looks at yarn sitting around without a specific purpose as a burden she doesn’t want to take on. At the start of a project she buys yarn for that project with enough extra for swatching, but no more. I can’t quite get my head around it, but I do appreciate her discipline.
Meanwhile…
I decided a while back that the pompoms I make are of insufficient quality, so ordered a little pompom loom. It took a while to get here, so I’d actually forgotten about it until it popped up in the mail.
Bruce had fun trying to figure out how it works, and sat down with the instructions. The package is from China, and the instructions are essentially unusable, so the two of us were in hysterics as I tried to explain how it works.
Here they are (and the misspelled words are just as they are on the package).
- As show in figure, A and B are overlap each other.
- Open the blue part
- Will be wrapped in blue plastic part of the wool
- Operation in figure 3 repeated
- cut the overlap part with the scissors
- Use the single wool tied up the middle, hard taut.
- Open dayice,
- Take off the knitting loom
- Finally Clipping surface shape
Bruce thinks I should resort to YouTube to find an instructional video. I’ve assured him I’ve got it under control.
That’s all for today, so until next time, stay calm and craft on.