New Year's knitting is a lot like life

Sweater knitting is the best. 

On New Year's Day I retrieved this project from the bottom of the knitting bag where it had resided for the last six months. I had plotted out the cables, the seed stitch panels, the dividing stitches in columns in an Excel spreadsheet, based on swatches of the pattern stitches I'd made weeks earlier. There was some, ahem, guesswork involved, maybe some rounding out of the math. I cast on the number of stitches I thought I needed for the back of the cardigan and knit a couple inches. But when I measured the width of the piece and multiplied times two, I discovered I was on my way to knitting a sweater that was six inches bigger than I wanted it to be. Too much cardigan. 

I looked at the spreadsheet, didn't see any obvious places where I could make the sweater smaller. I didn't know what to do. So the yarn, the needles, the swatches -- they all went to the bottom of the knitting bag and I finished out 2022 knitting hats and mittens and a lace scarf.

But it's a new year. And knitting problems are solvable problems. I took another look at the Blue Aran Cardigan spreadsheet on New Year's Day. I relented on the 36 stitches of honeycomb cable I was sure I needed in the center and cut it down to 24. I changed the panels along the side seams to a simpler version of moss stitch or seed stitch (or whatever, this is a flashpoint for arguments among knitters) and got rid of another 12 or 16 stitches. I recalculated the total number of stitches for the width of the back of the sweater, plotted the increases needed between the ribbing and the body of the sweater, cast on, knit a couple inches, discovered I'd made some math errors, ripped, cast on again, ripped and cast on AGAIN, and a week later I have completed about 14 of the 17 inches I need to reach the place where it's time to start the armhole shaping. Did some math last night to figure out exactly how that will happen and put that information in the spreadsheet as well, in clear typed sentences, not scrawled, abbreviated notes. 

It's all so satisfying. There's the actual piece of knitting (above), in a beautiful blue, squishy and firm. And then there's the spreadsheet, also a thing of beauty. When I looked up information about armhole shaping in a reference book from my shelf, I found two pieces of knitting graph paper folded together and containing notes from an earlier sweater. I think it was this one, made six years ago for my son Kurt. 

There is a detailed stitch chart in one corner of the first sheet and calculations scattered around the page, but there is no indication as to which of the many figures are the final, correct ones. I wrote down as much as I needed to while thinking out other things out in my head and one the needles. It was good enough. The sweater fit (well, the sleeves are too long). He liked it. But I can't recreate it or write a pattern from my notes for someone else to use., 

I've been knitting since I was eight years old and knit my first sweaters when I was in high school. One was an Aran Isle cabled sweater, the other a Norwegian-style ski sweater with a multi-colored yoke. They were oversized, which is to say, too big.  (I still have them. They fit better decades later, and it's not the sweaters whose size has changed.) I then knit a cardigan for my dad when I was in college, during the oil crisis of the 1970s when everyone was turning thermostats down. It was warm, praised for its cables and my talent at completing it -- but enormous. 

I've knit many sweaters in the years since, most of which have fit their recipients appropriately. Most have been knit from published patterns, with some adjustments so that they fit. This requires math — and I like math. Often it requires turning back, ripping and restarting a project, which can happen only after you recognize that it's headed in a bad way. Hoping against hope that it will turn out okay anyway, or that you can shrink it or stretch it after it's done is not a successful strategy. It's not a strategy at all. 

I belong to a couple of knitting groups on Facebook where knitters from around the world show what they're working on and offer advice and information to one another. Different kinds of people post in different ways in this sort of social media. Some are encouragers: "beautiful," "lovely work," "you're so talented." Others jump in and respond helpfully to questions. There are disagreements. It's hard to tell people who have always done things one way that in some circumstances another way might be more appropriate. (See: slipped edge stitches, English vs. continental knitting, blocking superwash, blocking at all, etc.)

My personal pet peeve is the commenters who say that in 20 or 30 or 60 years of knitting, they've never worked a gauge swatch. 

(Gauge swatch: a sample of what you're about to knit in the yarn you're about to use on the size needles that you think will be appropriate. At least four inches square. Used to determine how many stitches you're getting per inch, which should match what's specified in the published pattern, because if it doesn't whatever you making is going to come out a different size.)

A knitter might have to knit several gauge swatches on different size needles to get the right number of stitches per inch. Or one might use the information gained in a gauge swatch to adapt a pattern, using math, to get the size garment desired. Neglect to swatch and you might get lucky. Or maybe you don't care about the finished size, which is okay for a blanket or even a child's sweater, since kids grow, but not okay for the hat that droops over the wearer's eyes or the pullover you're making from expensive yarn for your sister-in-law. 

The case against swatching is that sometimes you want to just be knitting. You want to pick up the yarn and the needles and go! Why not start the project and see progress immediately! 

But doing things well requires planning, critical thinking, repentance, turning back and starting anew. I did that with my blue sweater yarn, after a six-month period of aging, and it makes me happy right now to look at the work on my needles. 

I do a lot of moralizing when I think about knitting, especially sweater knitting. Sometimes I feel compelled to reply to those never-swatchers on Facebook, though often I'll delete the comment before actually posting it. I doubt I'd change their minds. Sometimes I want to point out that continuing to knit a project that is not going well is a waste of time. The two or three (or five or six) hours it would take to rip and restart are nothing compared to the hours of work that will be wasted when the finished project is too big, too small, too long, or just ugly. 

This is the moment for the "knitting -- it's a lot like life" statement. Plan carefully, think about what you're doing as you do it, don't be afraid to admit you're wrong, take appropriate steps to fix what you've messed up. My life does not hold up to the same level of scrutiny as my knitting. 

But hey, I seem to be on my way to a blue cardigan that will fit and keep me warm in the winter for the next 20 years. Which is not nothing. 

Happy New Year.