Working On: getting through it
Time is relative when it comes to knitting.
You may have noticed, over the last few months, that I have been writing a lot about sewing, and comparatively little about knitting. This is because I have been working mostly on very long-term projects, including one that I started over 6 months ago, in November 2023.
For my husband’s birthday, I knitted him a plain stockinette, gunmetal-grey sweater vest, and it was this project that occupied my knitting time almost completely during February and the beginning of March. (I used the Alberta Vest pattern from Brooklyn Tweed, because it is a steeked vest and I very much wanted to learn that technique.) This was a tremendous success, as the gift was very much appreciated and has been worn with frequency ever since - very gratifying for me. Learning how to steek was invigorating, too, as it had been a long time since I’d felt out of my depth with knitting and it was good to be a beginner at something again.
That said, when I was working the body of that vest, going around, and around, and around, knitting knitting knitting, for what felt like miles, I thought - this is taking too long! I’m so sick of this project, I want to get it over with.
Normally, I don’t like to harbor any feelings of frustration towards my projects. It’s unpleasant to feel like you have to grit your teeth and get through something that you supposedly do for fun. I know some people feel that knitting for others is deeply disagreeable, but I usually like making things as gifts. It was strange - I felt locked in some kind of tedious embrace: it was just me and that sweater vest, forever.
The pullover I’m working on now began its life in a very different form, back in November. I originally cast on a plain top-down raglan with a folded collar, as I have a very simply gray raglan sweater (knitted last year) that I absolutely love and wear almost constantly. Something about the project was very wrong, though. Unfortunately I had finished the yoke, and the whole body, and even part of a sleeve, before it finally became clear that I had to rip it out and start over.
(I do pride myself on my willingness and ability to be ruthless with my knitting projects. If it isn’t right, it isn’t right - it doesn’t matter how close I am to being done, I will still unravel the whole thing and begin again.)
I am now very nearly finished with a lovely sweater that I like immensely. However: the sleeves have been interminable. There is a concept in the knitting world called ‘Sleeve Island’ - it’s when your project gets marooned just by the prospect of knitting two long, unbelievably boring sleeves. Perhaps you began a sleeve and simply couldn’t go on, or maybe you never even started, the armless torso of your failed sweater haunting you like some sort of maimed ghost. This is a real thing, it’s not just me.
Usually the way to avoid Sleeve Island is to just jump into the water with gusto: start knitting that sleeve before you even have a chance to think about it. This has always been my approach and it’s typically quite successful (though for years I knitted mostly three-quarter-length sleeves, not quite having the fortitude to get all the way to my wrist). Accordingly, I started working on the first sleeve as soon as I cast off the body, and immediately found myself in some kind of Sleeve Quicksand Pit, a Slough of Sleeve Despair. I was knitting and knitting and knitting and that sleeve just did not get any longer!
Normally I am a very patient knitter, considering myself to be more interested in the process than in the end product. It is not typical for me to be slogging through a project, wishing it would end.
Equally strangely, after I finally finished the first sleeve and started knitting the second, that one seemed to be working up incredibly quickly - I was absolutely cruising through it, zooming towards the Finished Sweater Line.
My knitting seems to have rendered Time meaningless. Now, there is a kind of flow state you sometimes get into with making, in which you are so absorbed by what you are doing that time seems to stop existing - you look up and five hours have gone by. But this was…not quite that, it was something else. I know that both of those sleeves, having the same number of stitches and needing to be the same length, must have taken the same amount of time to produce, but it absolutely did not feel that way. One of them, in my mind, was miles long, and the other just a few inches.
I get a lot out of my knitting practice, which I guess is why I’ve been doing it for so many years. I think knitting is so interesting: I love contemplating garment construction, learning new techniques, working with a new yarn. I need something to do with my hands, always, and knitting is perfect for filling time when in a waiting room, or on a car journey. I bring my knitting to the movie theater, and often knit while I’m reading. I love my finished projects, and wear them as much as I can. But it’s only recently, in the past few months, that I’ve learned I can apparently manipulate the very fabric of spacetime, just by knitting a sleeve - which is certainly interesting.
Speaking of knitting, I really am almost finished with this sweater - I just need to weave in the ends and block it - so I’m in the research phase for my next project. I have two skeins of a lovely heathery blue, bulky-weight handspun yarn that was given to me recently (thank you so much Nancy!) and I think I want to make a vest. If you have any pattern ideas, please send them my way - I’ve been scouring Ravelry’s pattern library to no avail. The most appealing thing I’ve found is PetiteKnit’s Holiday Slipover, but even that isn’t quite right. I’m hoping for a speedy project that will be a good transitional layer for chilly late-spring evenings.
Well, that’s it from me for now - I’ll be back next week with my reading round-up for April. I hope you all have a lovely week, I’ll talk to you soon!
Best,
I love to use Ann Budd's Knitter's Handy Book of Knitting Patterns as a guide to create pieces. These basic patterns are based on the gauge of the fabric you create and can be amended to be as sophisticated or plain as you like. She also wrote the Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns, which goes more in-depth on sweaters. I used that one to design a sweater I knit up in nine days.
And I know what you mean about sleeves! The same applies to socks, though usually the second sock is the one that drags. There, too, Ann Budd delivers with the idea to "just knit the second sock first!"
It looks great! A tip if you can afford two sets of needles is to start both sleeves and knit alternately each time you pick it up. It helps if you're not the kind of knitter who naturally keeps track of row numbers. You find yourself with a smaller target of just catching up to the other sleeve. I use this technique with socks to stop the second sock syndrome.