OM

A friend told me recently that she's too stressed and busy to knit anything complicated.  She craves a very simple pattern in a sensual yarn.  Not me.  When I'm stressed and distracted, I crave knitting that forces me to pay attention.  Put all of my brain power on this task, stop it from spinning on things I haven't done, don't know how to do, or can't control.  Call it meditation on needles.  I am in that mental place in my life just now, and I have begun the perfect project for it:  The Wanderlust Hoodie from the Fall 2006 issue of Interweave Knits.

Usually I will find a pattern that I'm interested in knitting, remember one of the several projects already in progress, feel guilty, pick up one of said projects, setting aside the new crush, eventually forgetting it.  Recently, though, I started keeping a knitting journal, and making notes on things I'd like to knit, trying to pair up some of my yarn stash to projects, writing them down so I don't forget my plans.  One of the reasons I tend to have a lot of yarn around is because I buy it with a plan, forget the plan, but then don't want to use it for something else because I might, at some point, remember the plan and wish I still had the yarn.  Sad, eh?

Anyway, I saw the hoodie in the magazine when the issue came in the mail, and dog-eared the page, then set the magazine aside to file.  Not long after, I was surfing around some knitting blogs and came across a post on the Fathom Harvill blog about the very same hoodie pattern that I'd marked.  She'd modified it a bit, most notibly removing the bobbles.  I also have "an anti-bobble policy" and seeing what the sweater looked like without them was even more appealing.  Plus, it was a nice complicated cable pattern, had waist shaping, which was something I've been wanting to try, was knit from a pretty bulky yarn (quicker to knit) and she'd knit it in such a pretty red.  I'm such a sucker for the look of the cover, the label, the example photo.  Wine, books, knitting patterns.  If the design and color draw me in, I'm all over it.  I checked out the subsitution yarn she'd used and discoverd it was much more affordable than the recommended yarn in the pattern.  Ignoring the stash of yarn in the other room, I ordered enough for the sweater.  I ordered a dark maroon-red, which may or may not be the same color she'd used.  Probably it is.  Before you accuse me of being a copy-cat, take a look in my closet.  Plum, brown, black and blood red.  Those are my colors.  I bought myself a red sweater from Gap a couple of years ago, but it wasn't the right red, and I only wore it once.  It went out in the last closet cull.  This is the right red, and I can't wait to wear it.  It will look great with my favorite jeans.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  I got the yarn and did a little dance in the kitchen while Lisa laughed at me.  Then she admitted that it really is beautiful yarn.  It has a little bit of variation from the dying process, and shifts between the black-red of the black krim tomatoes we grew this year, though cherry, and up to the brighter red of pomegranate skins.  M, you reading this?  You know how perfect this range of color is for me.  Because I want this sweater to really be perfect, I swatched.  Usually I make a half-hearted attempt at swatching, jump into the pattern with not enough information, and realize part-way in that something is off, before getting frustrated and either abandoning it or ripping it out.  Another reason I have a lot of yarn around here.  I wanted to avoid that, so I swatched.  A big swatch, even, a full cable pattern repeat.  I went down a needle size, got stitch gauge, but my row gauge is pretty short of the pattern.  Why is that?  My row gauge is always off.

So, armed with this information, I jumped in to the pattern.  Astute readers may notice here that I skipped a step.  I knit about 5 1/2 inches of pattern, to the point where the pattern read "knitting should measure 7" from cast-on edge" before I admitted that the row gauge thing might be a problem.  So I set the work aside and slept on it.  The next morning, I re-took all of my measurements, compared them to the schematic in the pattern, and realized that not only was the sweater going to be oddly short, it was also going to be too tight eveywhere except in the bust (now that's ironic, if you know what I look like).  And then I went to work.  And thought about the damn sweater all day.  I came home and ignored it, and got a good night's sleep.  Then the next morning I got out my calculator, my measurements, and the pattern, and refigured the whole thing.  I re-calculated all of the shaping for the next size up tp my row gauge so that the slopes would be correct and the narrowest bit would actually hit my waist.  I compared the length and width of all the pieces to the real me shape and confirmed that they were going to work.  I checked my math three times.  The sleeves may be a little long, but I'm used to that and prefer slightly long sleeves. Then I ripped out everything that I'd knit and cast on again.

I'm very proud of myself.  I'm  not really very good at math, and re-figuring a knitting pattern has always felt like a daunting task  But with a little bit of focus and a lot of desire, high-school algebra came back to me, and I worked it out.  I'm now 5 1/5 inches into the back again, and the correct number of rows remain to that 7" check in the pattern to get me to 7".  And it looks beautiful.  I have the cable pattern memorized now, because I've knit the repeat three times between the swatch, the first back and the second back, but it is still complicated enough that I have to pay just the right amount of attention to keep me concentrated and not just distracted.  I have spent the last two mornings in the studio, curled up in my desk chair, pattern and knitting journal and coffee spread out across my desk, watching a DVD or listening to music, knitting away on this beautiful thing.  And when it is time to get ready to go to work, I am calm and centered and focused, having spent 2 hours or so at my meditation of choice.

Comments

[mbshaw]

I can't wait to see it - maybe you'll bring it to Artfest :-) Oddly (or not) I just started a new knitting project too. But, like your friend, I prefer the brainless stuff, I just can't wrap my brain around more complicated patterns. Perhaps someday.

[celeste]

I'm also very impressed with your math calculations and look forward to seeing the finished sweater. I love that colourway too. In fact it's *very* much like the yarn I just knit Fetching with (my photo isn't nearly as crisp as yours however). I think it's in the latest of my blog postings.

[meriko]

Happy knitting, you. I'm sitting in the dark of morning, and I like the thought that you're down south, knitting with the red. :)

[The Feminist Mafia]

Wow. Good story. I'm also a 'by the seat of my pants' knitter, so I'm especially impressed with your math. Reconfiguring an entire pattern is pretty hard. Well done. And I must confess a love for that sweater sans bobbles, so I'll be interested to see it develop. Now I'm off to see Fathom Harvill's version.