When the front section was five inches shorter than the back section, I prepared to knit my first v-neck. Using a bread bag twist-tie as a marker, I marked the center of the row and started following the Yarn Girls' row-by-row directions. The left side used the K2tog decrease, and after twenty ever-shortening rows I had a quite creditable slanted edge. My tally sheet of completed rows was once again very useful, as I did not need to rely on measuring to know that I needed to knit two even rows before binding off in order to match the length to the back section. I rejoined the yarn to the center and repeated the procedure on the right side, this time using the SSK decrease. I blithely thought that I would never want to make any other kind of neck opening but a v-neck.
I was so buoyed up by the ease with which I had accomplished my first v-neck that I couldn't wait to complete the neckband and try it on. I read the finishing instructions and realized that they expected me to use a circular needle for the neckband. This was certainly more than I had bargained for, as there was no mention of circular needles in the list of required materials. I had briefly used a circular needle on my first sweater, just to be able to say I had tried it, but the experiment had left me a bit disoriented. Undaunted, I decided to adapt. I sewed the right shoulder seam and set to work picking up the stitches around the v-neck on a straight needle.
Two body sections of a sweater half-sewn together and hanging off a straight needle is a cumbersome thing. I did my best to make the necessary adjustments to the instructions for the center decreases from working in the round to working back and forth, relying in the end on common sense and a willingness to rip it out and start over until I figured it out. Four rows of ribbing took almost the same amount of time as the whole front did, and the left neck seam is still a hash. Ultimately, I came to the realization that such a textured yarn was surely made to absolve sins such as this, and I bound it off. I grimly thought that I would never want to knit another v-neck again.
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W.I.P.
Although I've completed two other projects since putting aside my dark rose heather sweater, it's never been far from my thoughts. Every time I flipped the pages of another book of sweater patterns, I wondered how I might adapt one design or another to resolve its issues. Periodically taking it out to analyze and brutally laying bare its deficiencies, I've come to accept that an insufficient quantity of matching yarn is not this sweater's only problem. The neckband is a little snug, and I really would like another shot at centering its cable pattern. Also, I'd prefer set-in sleeves to dropped shoulders, for which there was no need once I abandoned the stripes.
The do-over idea I finally hit upon is taken from a pattern in Sally Melville's book The Knitting Experience: The Purl Stitch. Her design is a set-in sleeve style in which most of the body is knit in one color, and the sleeves and upper portion of the body are knit in a lighter color. The color change occurs about three inches up the sleeve cap. I decided to use the next lightest shade of rose for the top and sleeves. (Don't think I didn't buy enough of that in the same dye lot for at least two whole sweaters!)
The first step to take was undoing the shoulder seams, a task which was easier than it might have been because I fortuitously used a different color yarn for sewing-up. With mixed feelings, I then unravelled the neckband. The traveling cable pattern is so striking that I was upset at having to sacrifice it, but at least I could look forward to knitting it again in the lighter color.
Now that my former incomplete sweater was once again nothing but two body sections, I had to undo the back section down to where the armhole shaping needed to begin. I shooed both cats out of the room and turned a blind eye to their indignant little triangular faces as I firmly closed the door. As an afterthought, calling through the door I enjoined the dog not to eat the cats while I was busy. I measured the piece carefully and calculated how many rows would have to go. I marked my stopping point with a safety pin to insure against over-enthusiasm, and frogged away.
The "works and days of hands" that had taken me weeks to create disappeared in minutes. I placed the exposed and vulnerable stitches on a needle as carefully as a SWAT team detonating a bomb. Without even stopping to thank the animals for their cooperation, I started on the armhole shaping without delay.
Purls of Wisdom
From T. S. Eliot's poem "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock":
"There will be time, there will be time...
...time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me,
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions...
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse."
Tomorrow:
- The second ugly sweater: My birthday deadline approaches.
- W.I.P.: Will the armhole shaping be complete?
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