The Heathen Housewife

What a long, strange road it’s been with this sweater. I bought the yarn for it at Meg Swansen’s Knitting Camp in July 2003, just a little more than a month before Julie was born. It aged in the stash closet for more than a year while I dealt with and knit for a colicky newborn, and then in early 2005 I suppose I thought I had my act together enough to tackle a complicated intarsia project.

I know I spent hours drafting out ideas for stitch patterns – at one point I was considering a pattern of overlapping circles to look like fish scales. I still have that one printed out around here somewhere. I took lots of notes, measuring sweaters that fit me well and were about the same thickness and style I was considering. Then I just jumped in and started knitting.

It was slow, arduous. I had even less free time to myself then than I do now – Julie fought sleep so valiantly back then! My brain was addled, and I did make mistakes. At one point I had to rip out a good chunk of a sleeve because (if I recall correctly) it wasn’t wide enough or maybe I had messed up the colors. I’ve blocked it out. After that nightmare, I was fed up, backed up with other projects begging to be knit, and out of confidence in the project. Like so many knitters before me, I gathered up all the yarn and materials, stuck it in a storage box, and shoved it in the back of the stash closet.

For three years that thing taunted me. So many times, I considered just throwing the whole thing in the garbage rather than let my eye fall casually on it sitting there laughing at me even one more time. And then enough was enough, and I buckled down to knit it this summer. After five years, just a few months worth of on-again off-again effort was enough to finish it off.

I mentioned Joe’s less than stellar photography – partly due to his lack of interest in the task, and partly because by the time we try for a photo shoot, I’m in my PJs with my hair pulled back and my glasses on and makeup off. Lucky for us, we had a playdate with our Canadian friends on Friday, and my friend J agreed to help me out.

On the way there, Sophie stopped on the bridge to watch the ducks swimming in the murky creek. While we were hanging out there, a squirrel came and started crossing the bridge. I couldn’t believe how fearless it was – it passed within a few feet of us, and once on the other side hung out and tried to steal food from my backpack.

He’s above Sophie in the picture above, and if you look closely in the shadows at the bottom-right of the one below, you can see that furry bugger headed right past us. Cute, but unnerving!

J is an awesome photographer, and did a great job of getting flattering pictures of both me and the sweater. It was a perfectly cool fall day, just right for a thick sweater in place of a jacket.

When J saw it on me, she exclaimed that the colors look much better in person than they had on the blog. I think this series in natural sunlight do it justice.

From the back:

The shoulder-strap:

The clasps in the front – the yarn shop ladies and I had an hilarous discussion on clasp placement involving way too many instances of the word boobs for my comfort.

And there you have it! I believe I am pleased with this one after all. Oh, and a couple more thoughts.

Somebody asked about blocking in a comment from the last post. Blocking made all the difference in the world on this project. It really smoothed everything out, and the relaxed fabric sort of stretched a bit to actually fit me. I changed my mind about the before-blocking picture. It’s truly awful, so I’m not going to show it. All I did was wash the whole sweater in a sink of lukewarm water with a drop of liquid dish soap, then I wrapped it in a towel to get out the excess water, then smoothed it flat to dry, stretching it into shape just the tiniest bit. So easy, and so worth it!

Also, in case anyone asks – this is my own personal pattern, and I don’t think I’ll be writing this one up. Knitting it was crazy enough. If anyone is just dying for the diamond graph, my arm might be twisted to hand that out.

Next time – well, there are several other things either finished or very nearly finished. Maybe I’ll get some pictures and share one with you in the next few days. I really must start to update more often before I lose all my readers.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 6th, 2008 at 3:45 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.