Still giddy from the qualified success of Sam's sweater, I dragged my daughter off to the l.y.s. during Christmas vacation week to choose yarn for my next project. My daughter was 10 years old at the time, still young enough to go shopping with Mom without emitting that impatient exhalation that angries up my blood so often these days. The next sweater would be made in her size, in a color of her choosing.
Simple sweaters are best.
Not yet daring to venture into the heady realm of set-in sleeves, it was to be a drop-shoulder, stockinette stitch crewneck with 2x2 ribbing at hem, cuffs, and neckband.
Surprisingly, she gravitated toward a yarn that did not nauseate me--"Coral Gables." From a distance it was a soft orange, but upon closer scrutiny strands of fuschia and yellow were evident. We were both enchanted. It was acrylic, which was fine with me, since the label also proclaimed it was machine washable and dryable. (I have no fiber snobbery; I will knit with anything as long as it's soft.) Content in my ignorance of dye lots or yardage requirements, I gathered up 3 thick, loaf-shaped skeins, which seemed like it should be enough to knit any normal sweater.
Even though the label recommended size 10 1/2 needles to achieve 14 sts over 4", I somehow took a fancy that this would produce too flimsy a fabric. Well, maybe I just wanted to buy new needles. I decided on size 8, which happened to only come in electric metallic blue. I didn't even consider how jarring this would be flashing through orange yarn...row after row...week after week...as it would turn out, month after month.
With a smugness I can only shake my head at now, I knitted a gauge swatch, measured, calculated, and cast on.
W.I.P.
Right sleeve sewn to shoulder, much better length than left sleeve. Like Superman reversing the Earth's rotation to turn back time and revivify Lois Lane, I quickly removed the left sleeve and frogged the sleeve cap, yanking length after length of wool with determination. Keeping my wits firmly about me as I erased the final offending rows, my yanking slowed to a cautious tinking as I placed live stitches on the needle. Breathing a sigh of relief after counting the stitches twice, just to make sure none had been lost, I began to reknit the sleeve cap.
Purls of Wisdom
From Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Without Tears:
"Properly practiced, knitting soothes the troubled spirit, and it doesn't hurt the untroubled spirit either."
Tomorrow:
- More about my first ugly sweater
- How the Yarn Girls inspired me
- Why Richard Feynman is my favorite theoretical physicist
- Will I have finished my sleeve cap?
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