Commitment

I have been knitting. Capering like an imp over the election results hasn't consumed all of my spare time.

The Sunshine Yarns Jaywalker is mid-heel flap and just as lovely and colorful and chaotic as it was when I started.



But I'm just not feeling the love. In part because I'm not a very fast knitter, and at 10 stitches per inch progress is slow.

But really, the problem is that I want to start a sweater. I know this because I keep re-reading the Yarn Harlot's sweater chapter in Knitting Rules and eyeing the Hourglass Sweater in Last-Minute Knitted Gifts longingly.

Still, I don't buy the yarn. In general, I buy single skeins in pretty colors with no particular project in mind. I'm pretty sure if I added up my many lonely solo skeins, I would have more than enough for a few sweaters. So it's not as if I've made a reasoned financial decision not to invest in yarn. Yarn diet? Who said anything about a yarn diet?



(Though I have almost convinced myself that it would be a perfectly reasonable financial decision to buy One-Skein Wonders to deal with my solo skein problem - I can convince myself to buy almost anything book-wise)

So it must be a commitment issue. As you may have noticed, I'm not a relaxed person by nature. I don't just make a firm decision and stick with it. I worry and then I dither, and then I worry some more. Buying that much of the same yarn is a statement: it says "I am going to make something big, something beautiful and time-consuming that may not work out. But I'm a fairly good knitter and I think it will be just fine."

And I tend to make mistakes. I blithely ignore the pattern. I twist my knitting in the round. I knit with the tail end of the old yarn. And I loathe swatching. “Fairly good knitter” might be pushing it, now that I think about it.

None of these things are conducive to confidently investing in ten skeins of yarn and diving eagerly into a weeks (or months)-long project.

Then I tell myself I have knit one sweater, although it was a baby sweater.



The pattern is a modification of the Placket-Neck Pullover in LMKG. I didn’t do the placket because I thought it was busy and who wants to button things on a squirmy baby anyway. Props to the Subway Knitter for inspiring me. I used about 1.5 balls of Lamb’s Pride Superwash in Cinnamon Twist, on a size 7 circular needle. Seriously quick, easy and cute.

In fact, after I finished it, I was so pleased that I left it draped over my couch for a week, pausing to admire it every time I walked by.

The especially cool part is that this is essentially the same pattern as the lusted-after Hourglass Sweater. Bump up the stitches, add some waist shaping and fussier hems (and a whole lot more time and patience), and voila, you have a grown-up sweater. I can totally knit that shit.

And imagine how much I would love a full-size sweater if this wee thing made me squeal and jump up and down with pride?