Let’s talk about sweaters
It took me quite awhile before I felt comfortable enough to knit a sweater, mostly because I had a lot of foundational work I felt like I needed to do before I could approach it. So, for a while I just neve knit them assuming it was too hard.
One day I just really wanted something to show for all of my swatches and practices and experiments, so I decided to just jump in.
My first sweater was a riff off of a basic pattern, I felt like the pattern could hold my hand while I felt free to be a little more creative and try things out.
This sweater was the first result. I was proud I finished a garment but the variegated yarn pooled completely different than I thought. My rainbow sleeve didn’t quite have the effect I wanted and my COLLAR WAS ALL WRONG. I realized how many things I wanted to just redo myself, and I felt a couple tweaks would be able to get that perfect sweater. This was called the “Sunburst sweater” because of the ombré on the collar. Maybe one day I’ll revisit this to get a more effective outcome.
So for the first time I decided to try at it all my own. This was the result. I took my sisters measurements and decided to try and knit a sweater in her favorite color. I thought I got my gauge right and I wanted the gut area slightly bigger so that you could wear it on a full stomach— I failed to realize that I was unintentionally creating an A line. I gave the sweater too much ease for a bulky weight yarn. I felt better about the collar but man did this look and feel weird. I’ll admit I was pretty discouraged after this. This sweater is in my frogging pile ready for when I’m ready to tackle it again. (I have ideas) This was going to be called “lavender fields” but I’ll reserve that for when this is reincarnated
This is my third design! I was pretty discouraged from doing something out on my own, and I had this red yarn in my stash for a specific project in mind. That was a lopapeysa sweater, and I had a pattern just for that. I was going stick to the pattern and everything was going go perfectly. Except it didn’t. The yarn was too variegated for multicolor stranded work and I slowly realized that as I knit bottom up. So midway through I just decided to riff. I threw away the pattern and went forward with designing the shape and faire isle motif by my self. I crafted the collar (my favorite of all three) by myself. I call this “Red Herring” because I started going down one line of inquiry and it ended up being completely outside of that realm. I also cheekily made sure every motif was a chevron or herringbone related pattern. 🙃 gosh there’s so much to this sweater I love it.
Y’all I am so proud of that sweater you don’t even know. So proud that I want to grade it and release it as a pattern. But what I really want to say here is
I would have never have gotten to that sweater if it wasn’t for the first two.
things aren’t going work out perfectly
But that’s okay. What I love about knitting is that every stitch is a learning experience. You learn something new about your craft with every project and that informs your next one. So please don’t be discouraged. Don’t feel like you’re a failure when things don’t work out the way you planned, be that your first granny square, scarf or any other attempts you make in life. Mistakes will be made but you can love yourself and your work at every step of the way. The fact that you could have done better doesn’t have to be destructive. You can let that push you forward into the next thing and you will do better.
You can keep growing and growing but remember when you look back at that first thing. You did that with all the same intention, work, and passion that you have now.
tangentwithtanner
kaledo-art
romaincrisis
dededos
discoholicmusic
