eight
Sweaters
EVERY SWEATER STARTS THE SAME WAY. I go up and down the aisles in the yarn shop (I’m far too attached to my stash yarn to use it for sweaters), pulling out skeins and giving them a squeeze (perhaps a sniff), reading the labels, sighing, putting them back, and continuing to wander down the wall of yarn. Then I find a yarn I really like, realize it comes only in petal pink and violent puce, and put that one back. A couple of aisles down I actually find the right color, but it’s the wrong weight of yarn. (I’d rather not discuss what I’m doing in the double-knitting section when I’ve come here to buy a worsted weight. I think it’s the wool fumes.)
Knowing that I have the wrong yarn entirely should lead to immediate rejection, but instead I spend more than a few minutes consulting my pattern and doing a little mental math (if you can believe that) before I realize I could actually convert the pattern to use this yarn, but that I’m going to drive myself batty doing it (and it hasn’t been too long since the squinty eye I developed last time went away). So, I stuff that yarn back on the shelf too. This common knitterly ritual — and it has to be common, because there are 14 other knitters in the shop, all sighing and patting and sniffing — goes on for a good long time, and it should. I’m contemplating the beginning of a sweater and that takes a lot of thought. You can throw away a couple of hours on a bad hat that was a mistake from its impulsive start, but a whole bad sweater takes some ingenuity to excuse.
A BIG DECISION
I love this about sweaters. I love that they’re a big decision. Sweaters aren’t like whipping off a pair of mittens or a whack of socks. Other knitting can be forgiven for flaws: a hat with a weird top is eccentric, a pair of baggy mittens is still functional. A shawl with bad gauge still drapes. Sweaters, though, are really hanging it on the line. A sweater with a bad gauge, a weird neckline, and a baggy front has no charm. It’s just bad clothes, and herein lies the rub, the reason that so many people — including me, from time to time — are scared off by sweaters from the word go. Sweaters are clothes, not just knitting, and because there is more to them, there’s more that can go wrong. A bad scarf can still be charming on some level and the consequences will never make your breasts look saggy, but a bad sweater has impact.
A LABOR-OF-LOVE TALE
My first sweater was a nightmare. I had a boyfriend and we had been dating (actually, going steady, which at the time seemed a very important distinction) for about six months. Teen relationships, I realize now, are counted in dog years, with more time passing for the teens than for everybody else. Therefore, a month is like a year and we had been going out for six months — we had celebrated our half-anniversary. (Now that I’ve been married for so long it seems stupid to celebrate a mere half year, but at the time it was hopelessly romantic.) So, I felt our relationship was solid enough that it was time to knit him a sweater.
I went through my stack of books, magazines, and leaflets, in search of the perfect thing. This phase can’t be rushed. Sweaters need to be imagined, dreamed over. I’m forever taking hours with this part because I actually know what sweater I want. I can see it in my mind; it’s just a matter of finding the pattern that I’m imagining. (I can’t tell you how difficult it is to find a designer who’s thinking just the way I am.) When I had the right plan, I trotted off to the yarn store for the yarn that the pattern suggested. (I told you I was young.) I found it, and after realizing that it was not only priced out of reach of my discount-store-cashier paycheck, I picked another yarn. The pattern called for 16 balls, so that’s how many I bought.
When I got home, I enthusiastically pulled out the pattern and the yarn, piled the balls up around me and gleefully cast on, imagining not just the wonder of the sweater, but also the wonder of how much my boyfriend would love me when I gave it to him. Knitting a sweater takes time and for my more-than-six-foot-tall boyfriend, that time was going to be significant.
As I toiled away, I thought only lovely thoughts. How handsome he would look. How grateful he would be. How he would keep it close to him forever and when we were old he would sit on the porch swing and wear the sweater and our grandchildren would sit beside him in the evening light (they would be visiting us to catch fireflies in the garden) and lean against him (still ruggedly handsome, even in his old age) and would say “Grampa, tell us the sweater story.” And he would. He would tell them it was when I knit him that sweater that he knew I was the love of his life. That I had knit him hundreds of sweaters since, and even a couple of vests, but it was this one, this first one that he loved most, since as he had unwrapped it and seen its soft blue stitches, as he ran his fingers over the wool, he had realized it wasn’t just a sweater; it was the beginning of the rest of his wonderful life.
That’s what I thought while I knit it. The sweater was going to have a life of love and glory … except it seemed just a smidge big. Truth be told, I had purchased chunky-weight yarn when the pattern called for worsted, and was too inexperienced to know the peril my mortal soul was in. To compound the problem, my youthful idea of gauge consisted of using the needles called for in the pattern without regard for the type of yarn.
This was very wrong (and resulted in me knitting not just an enormous sweater, but also one so stiff that the pieces wouldn’t fold), but I was blinded by love. Plus, he was a big guy. What was the trouble with having a sweater that ended up a little big? It would be comfortable and cozy, like a big hug. (Looking back, I hardly recognize myself.)
Then there was the problem with the neck. It was a little crooked. (It was a little crooked exactly the way that the Godfather was a bit of a criminal.) I thought about going back, but it had been really hard to do the first time and I thought it probably wouldn’t matter once I got the neck stitches picked up. Note to self: If, when you go to pick up the stitches, if you get the 24 the pattern suggests on one side and a scant 13 on the other, this is a good indication that the neck isn’t going to “block out” (the other solution I had in the back of my mind, which too was dreadfully wrong).
I plugged on though, even when one side of a sleeve sort of puckered in a strange way. I tugged at that quite a lot, but I was sure no one would be able to see it if he kept his arms at his sides. I tried to pucker the other sleeve so it would at least match, but it gaped at me without remorse. The other problem (not that it was exactly a problem, because what can stand in the way of true love?) was that I had needed to go back to the yarn shop twice for more yarn (why on earth the fact that the sweater was taking triple the amount of yarn the pattern called for wasn’t a tip-off that it was going to be triple the correct size is a question I still can’t answer) and that the sweater had now cost me more than three months of part-time income at a crappy job. What we do for love.
When it was done, I was really proud. Too proud, now that I think about how it actually looked. When I tried it on, the arms dragged on the floor (one of them less so than the other; the puckering subtracted some length), and the hem reached almost to the ground. I took it off by letting it fall down and then stepping out of the left side of the badly unbalanced neckline. Still, I told myself, he was a big guy (Jabba the Hut would have drowned in that sweater) and it was the ’80s. Oversize was in.
I folded it up, wrapped it in tissue paper, and presented it to my boyfriend with all the pomp and circumstance I could muster. I’ll never forget the look on his face. At the time, I was sure it was awe. I’m still sure it was awe, actually. He took in the whole thing, declined to try it on, and three days later dumped me without so much as a nod in my general direction. I still feel bad about it. That was a lot of wool to kiss good-bye.
INCREMENTALISM
When I’m intimidated by the idea of a sweater, I use the concept of incrementalism to overcome whatever is flipping me out. I break down the thing and look at it only in parts. Often, once I look at it in pieces — only the individual pieces — I can pull myself together.
I sit down and read the pattern. Inevitably it says something like Back: Cast on 89 stitches. Easy. I can cast on. I cast on all the time. Heck, sometimes casting on is the only part of a project I do! I know several ways to cast on and as long as I don’t get bogged down trying to choose among them, I’m good to go.
Next? Work K1, P1 ribbing for 4 inches. Dude, I can knit and purl. Adeptly and in order. Bring it on.
Change to larger-size needles … Okay, this could give me trouble. There was that time that I changed only one of the needles and the gauge of the sweater alternated in rows as I knit with one 4 mm and one 6 mm needle for the rest of the back of the sweater. It would’ve been a design feature except that I succeeded in switching both needles on the front and they were different sizes. Still, that was a particularly stunning bit of stupidity and I’m not likely to do that twice.
… and work in stockinette stitch until work measures 12 inches from cast-on edge. The trickiest part here is finding a tape measure. Still, my husband has 12-inch feet and I can usually find him. I’ll measure off his foot.
The pattern will go on (if it doesn’t, that’s a sign of a really, really bad pattern) and I’ll go on reading it and soon I’ll realize that it’s not so bad, especially one bit at a time. Sleeves are either tubes or vague triangles that you seam up, backs and fronts are based on squares — taken piece by piece, sweaters are easy.
SKILLS NEEDED TO KNIT A SWEATER
• Casting on and off
• Knitting and purling
• Increasing and decreasing
• Sewing up seams (unless your sweater doesn’t have any)
• Blocking
There will be some variations on these, but keep an open mind. Picking up stitches is still just knitting them, and increasing evenly across a row may require some thinking (or a calculator) but it’s still just increasing. Even the most complicated knitting instruction in the world is (once you recover your equilibrium) just a combination of the skills above.
Emotionally speaking, I find I need a couple of other skills. Some stamina, for example, which is far, far different from patience, and has merits, as does the ability to do things one step at a time without being overwhelmed by the whole. Really, the one skill, knitterly or otherwise, that you can’t learn while knitting is blocking. (Well, and sewing, but you can get out of that if you want to.)
EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT BLOCKING I LEARNED THE HARD WAY
In theater, blocking is when the director lays out all the movements and places for the actors. In knitting, it’s much the same thing. You take all your pieces of knitting and lay them out, check the measurements on the pattern, and then pin or smooth them to the suggested dimensions. Then, either steam the pieces in place after you pin them or pin them while they’re still damp from a wash. Blocking can be a serious help to a knitter making up a sweater: it evens things out and lines up edges for sewing, that sort of thing. Knitters often think blocking is going to solve way more problems than it can, and I’m no exception. If I hear myself say “Do you think it will block out?” or “I’ll fix it in the blocking,” it’s a heads-up to me that whatever I’m talking about probably can’t be solved by blocking.
HINTS FOR SUCCESSFUL BLOCKING
If your blocking plan involves the word yank it probably isn’t going to work. This approach to blocking often involves things that are too short or too narrow, and is doomed to failure. Blocking is a subtle art.
If your blocking plan involves big change — really big change like getting an extra 10 inches into a bustline — it’s probably not going to work. Blocking will fine-tune fit but it won’t give you an extra 10 inches. Knitting is an elastic form, yes, but with limits. This means that if you’re able to pull it enough widthwise to get 10 inches in the chest, you will likely lose several inches in the length. This leads to noticing it’s now too short and giving it a lengthwise tug, then seeing you lost the width and pulling there only to see it’s too short again. (Tip: The number of times a knitter repeats this cycle is related to intelligence. Quit early.)
Blocking won’t stop stockinette from curling. I’m sorry; this is just the nature of stockinette and of stitches like it. There’s nothing you can do. You’re going to pin it out and steam it and stretch it and then when you pick it up it’s going to curl. (Blocking again won’t work either. I’m ashamed of how I learned that last one.)
Blocking will absolutely fix a neckline that’s a little too chokey, a wrist that’s a little too tight, and ribbing that clings annoyingly just under your rear end, making you look like an inflated balloon.
Wool blocks like a dream; acrylic, not so much. Acrylic — and I can’t stress this enough — will go limp the minute you try to steam it. This limpness is termed “killing acrylic” and it can’t be fixed. Never, ever steam (or iron) to block acrylic.
EVENTUALLY … YOU WILL KNIT CARDIGANS
If you knit sweaters, the odds are you’re eventually going to get it into your head to knit a cardigan. I love cardigans better than pullovers: When I get hot or cold in public, it’s much easier to get a cardigan off and on without wrecking my hair or pulling my glasses from my face. Considering how inelegant I am most of the time, I appreciate all the help I can get. A cardigan is infinitely more useful, but it’s also a little trickier than the noble pullover. The sticking point, and there’s always a sticking point, is that you must learn how to add (pardon me while I suppress a shudder) a button band.
Let’s establish my bias. I hate button bands with the same passion and fury I felt when a girl named Cindy and two other pigtailed thugs chased me home from the fourth grade almost every day for a month. I hate button bands where you pick up stitches and knit the bands out, perpendicular to the fronts. They always look like I’m investigating free-form knitting until I’ve frogged it a dozen times.
To avoid this test of skill, I’ve accepted that the vertical-strip button band is my alternative. Sadly, there’s nothing to love about the vertical band either. Simple instructions, though: Cast on 6 (or 7, or 10 stitches, just enough to inspire you to learn to knit backwards to avoid turning for the 467th time at the end of the annoyingly short row) and knit back and forth, ad infinitum, until the band, slightly stretched, is the correct length. “Slightly stretched” is a particularly maddening description, isn’t it? Isn’t that subjective? What if you’re kind of high-strung? Relaxed? It is my suspicion that the reason they give this vague instruction is that the exact appropriate length of a button band is as much a mystery to cardigan designers as it is to us.
So here’s my thought. Why knit button bands? Really, especially for vertical ones, why wouldn’t you just include the stitches for the bands when you knit the fronts? I know it’s not going to look quite as fabulous as it would the other way (that “slightly stretched” aspect adds a certain “je ne sais quoi”), and that a team of knitting examiners would be appalled, but what’s there to stop me from adding the seven stitches for a band to the stitches for a front and keep them in rib while I knit it up? I’ll do the front where the buttons go first, then I’ll mark the rows I think should have buttonholes on the other side, and I’ll knit them in as I go.
If a button band really makes you twitch, think about putting in a zipper instead of buttons. To do this, add a few extra stitches to the fronts of your sweater (if you aren’t adding button bands you need something to make up the width). If your button band was 1 inch, add a half inch of stitches on either side. Knit these in something non-rolling (like garter stitch) as you knit the fronts. When you’re done and have the sweater sewn up (if you’re sewing) and you get to the part where the instructions are to add the button bands, you can laugh like crazy and yell “Suckers!” (that’s my favorite part) and sew in a zipper. It’s satisfying.
SWEATER KNITTING IS TRUTH
In life, much happiness is gained by traveling the path to self-acceptance. “Know yourself” is a goal touted by inspirational speakers, therapists, and mothers all over the world, and it turns out there’s a way that applies to knitters as well.
KNITTER, KNOW THYSELF
The biggest hurdle to sweater knitting, at least knitting sweaters that fit you, is having a clear understanding of what size you are. Most knitters (including me) seem to struggle with this. I don’t know if it’s low self-esteem, poor body image, or the simply horrible reality that a sweater too small can’t be worn but a sweater too big can be … but most knitters overshoot wildly, knitting sweaters far too big for them.
When I decide to knit myself a sweater, I measure my bust, see that it’s 37 inches, consult the pattern, decide that I don’t want to get burned by making something too small and so pass over the 36 and the 38, and make the choice to knit the size for a 40-inch bust. (No way that will come out too small. I’ll be able to wear it even if there’s a little bit of a gauge accident.) When I’m done and the sweater definitely isn’t too small (in fact, it is voluminous enough that while wearing it I resemble a ship under sail), I get disappointed, claim my sweaters never work out and put another mental note in the mental box marked Why I don’t knit sweaters, proof number 17.
The truth is that I’ve done it to myself by not achieving the acceptance stage. I’m not a fat 37 or a 37 that’s bigger than most other 37s; I’m just a 37, and if I could get my head around that, my sweaters would look a lot better on me. You need to accept the reality of the body you’ve been given and not pretend it’s other than it is. That way, you’ll have a great-looking sweater that looks great on you.
It’s tricky, and I’m sure Freud would have a field day with the closetful of enormous sweaters I’ve knit. I’m sure the phrase “Napoleon complex” would be bandied about. (How big does this woman think she is?)
If, after some experimenting and adjusting, you find the perfect sweater pattern for you, laminate it. It will serve as the template for many good sweaters to come. I have a laminated pattern that has sleeves the right length, a good amount of ease for me, and a neckline I believe is flattering, and I use it with every sweater I make. I can take the stitch pattern I like from one sweater and plug it into my favorite, and I can compare the width and length of a new pattern to know if it’s going to fit the way I like. If I find another pattern I think would be great except for, say, the neck, I use my favorite one in place of it. A good basic sweater pattern that fits you nicely is a tremendous find. Guard it with your life.
THE SPIRIT OF THE LAW
While you knit a sweater is a very good time to come to understand the difference between the letter of the law and the spirit of the law, and knowing that difference can mean a leap for sanity or a crash into defeat.
This concept can be illustrated by the difference between a Saturday night in Toronto and a Saturday night in a small town. Let’s say a guy is walking down Queen Street in Toronto. It’s a busy street, there’s tons of people, it’s a hot summer night, and the dude is walking home from the store with a six-pack of beer. Suddenly he gets an idea, reaches into his bag, and cracks himself a cold one. Buddy is walking down Queen Street, drinking a beer, completely sober, hurting nobody. I promise you, if a cop sees that beer open on Queen Street, our friend is going to the Don Jail till Monday morning. The law says no drinking alcohol in public spaces, and that’s what the cop is going to enforce. Toronto’s a big city. The cop doesn’t have time to work out that buddy is sober and harmless. The cop is enforcing the “letter of the law.”
Now, switch over to a small town. Same guy, same Saturday night, same beer. Dude’s walking down the street, drinking a beer in public, breaking the law. Luckily, this is the only crime being committed in this small town tonight and when the cop sees him, he has time to figure out what’s going on. He talks to the guy for a bit and finds out that he’s sober and harmless. Because the no-drinking-in-public law is really on the books to keep harmful drunks off the street, and this guy isn’t a harmful drunk, the cop reminds our friend that he shouldn’t be drinking on the street and suggests he pour out the beer and get along home before he opens another. This is the spirit of the law in action.
How does this apply to sweater knitting? Let’s say all the pieces of my sweater are knit and now all it needs is a neck band and button bands. Excellent. I glance at my pattern book and see that the sweater does indeed have a neck band, that it’s knit in 1×1 rib, and that you pick up and knit some stitches after joining both shoulder seams. There’s some other information there, like how many to pick up, what side the designer thinks I should pick them up from, and how many rows of 1×1 rib she thinks the neck band should have. Those instructions represent the letter of the law. The spirit of the law is basically saying that I should end up with a neck band done in 1×1 rib, not that I should sit here for 17 hours tinking and picking up stitches along the neckline to get the exact number in the pattern, making myself crazy until I’m mean to my husband and hate the stupid little (big) sweater.
It’s not that I don’t have respect for patterns (well, I have less than most knitters, but then I don’t mind ripping out stuff when it looks bad). I understand the law. I understand that someone went to a lot of trouble to work it out for me, and darn it, I appreciate it. Considering, though, that I’m familiar with the law and what it’s intended to do, I don’t believe anyone meant me to throw my common sense out the window and give myself new wrinkles trying to do things exactly as I’m told, or to disregard the experience I have gained from knitting neck bands in the past, or to have the kind of neck band I’d like. Therefore, I’ll pick up as many stitches as seems right, and if it looks okay, I’m just going to follow the rest of the instructions that specified a 1×1 rib for, well, as far as I want to.
There are many truisms about sweater knitting, like that the sleeve you’ve knit and the armhole you’ve knit should bear a certain relationship to each other, and it would be smashing if I could rip off a list for you to use. The ultimate truth about knitting is that sometimes the finer points of the craft become about “feel.” If something doesn’t feel right, do it over. If a mistake is bugging you, rip it back or it will always bug you. If, by accident, you find a new way to do something that doesn’t match what the pattern is telling you, carry on. You could be inspired. Never be afraid to trust your instincts. Therein lies the path to greatness, and in the end … it’s only knitting.
It’s a commitment. Socks and hats are fun and, in their elevated forms, can certainly be artful, but sweaters are like a marriage (or at least an engagement).
It’s an upgrade from an accessory, and a really good sweater can become like a good friend.
Once you get the hang of it, knitting your own sweaters makes it possible for you to have garments that actually fit, and sleeves the actual length of your arms. Realizing this was a big deal for me, considering i usually have an urge to phone commercial sweater producers and ask them if monkeys are their sizing models.
You could spend a lifetime exploring all the variations on sweaters: raglan in pieces, raglan in the round, top-down seamless, bottom-up seamless, cardigan, steeked Norwegian, fine wool English jumpers, Irish Arans, the weird thing you invented when you thought you were doing a cap sleeve but got two pages of the pattern stuck together.
There’s a style for everyone. There isn’t anybody who doesn’t look good in a sweater. Admittedly, finding the right sweater can be a bit of a process, but at least you get to knit the experiments.
When a sweater goes wrong, it’s much more spectacular than a wayward scarf. You can laugh about a hat that came out weird for maybe 10 minutes, but an unexpectedly “unique” sweater never stops being funny (once you work through the period of grief and shock).
A sweater’s a big canvas. If you get an urge to knit an intarsia hockey player onto something you want to wear, a sweater is just about the only thing that’s going to work. (Don’t laugh. I’m a Canadian. When I was a kid, everybody i knew had a hockey player sweater. Well, except for Renee. She was lucky. Hers had a ballerina.)
A baby sweater done in chunky yarn is the fastest high a knitter can achieve.
A sweater project offers variety: the challenge of picking up stitches and working the decreases, the almost meditative calm of the plain bits for the body and sleeves, and that familiar urge to strangle yourself with a circular needle when you realize you missed the instruction “at the same time” and the sleeve is 10 inches too long. Good times.
A sweater affords the scientific-minded a chance to experience the phenomenon of the Knitting Black Hole. At some point in your work (although you have definitely knit 34 rows since you first noticed), you stop making progress. You knit and knit but the sweater doesn’t get bigger. Then, mysteriously, you are released and discover that, even though you’ve been obsessively measuring every two rows, it’s suddenly five inches too long. If you figure this out, let me know. It makes me nuts.
