If the Sweater Fits...

I knit shawls. Lots of them. In different shapes and colors. The number of shawl patterns I have is obscene and I keep finding more I want to do. Really! It's a sickness ... 


I have yarn to do socks and I have a lot of yarn in sweater quantities for ... wait for it ... sweaters. Other knitters in my local store are more versatile in their projects - a sock here, a shawl there, a sweater now and again. 

But I seem to be stuck on shawls. And I finally think I've figured out why.




A shawl always fits. If it's too small, it's a shawlette. Too large? Maybe a throw. You kinda can't go wrong with a shawl.

I've made a pair of socks. I am still waiting for Big Foot to claim them

A sweater? In the past month I've watched no less than three knitters try on sweaters that were closer to completion than they were to beginning. As they got ready to put the sweater on, the rest of the us held our breath. We all knew what was coming. We all knew this was a moment of truth. And we all knew what it feels like when it becomes obvious that what you're doing isn't working. All that work, now what?

So we watched, holding our breath, crossing our fingers ...

Only one of those knitters was able to continue, the other two tried to figure out how to make what they'd done better. Seems there's really no way to make a sweater that's too small get bigger. Or stretch a too tight bind-off that makes the front of the cardigan shorter than the rest of the hem.  

Believe me, in the hopes that the fit was only an optical illusion, making it fit was tried. Yank here, pull there. Even the delusion 'that S#!T will block right out' wasn't convincing. The only thing that was going to work was ripping back and redoing. And potentially ripping back and redoing ... again.

My guess is that both of those sweaters are currently in time out until the knitters have the heart to face them again. As of last night, the third sweater was almost done.

I can't face knitting a sweater right now. 

The stress of moving my mom closer and keeping up with work and home has been, um, not good for my weight. Ice cream? Yes, please! Potato chips? You bet! Salad? Yeah, not so much.

So while I have a sweater's worth of yarn, I don't know that I have a sweater's worth of yarn for one that would fit me right now. And I really couldn't face spending all that time knitting only to find out I didn't have enough.

Life's too complicated at the moment. Knitting is my happy place.

For the time being? I'll knit shawls. They fit.