Knitting in my life

Today I was knitting with my good friends and really enjoyed it. I forget, since my carpal tunnel surgery, how much I enjoy that simple activity. Watching those two master knitters knit, made me want to knit a sweater, that, one, actually fits, two, looks good, three I fall in love with, and finally doesn't take the rest of my life to knit. I will always have few projects going, but I'm going to start a new one today, and by start I mean, use an actual sweater that I love and wear all the time as a pattern for size. Second, I'm going to find a pattern stitch I can easily memorize. Third a pattern that is knit from the top down, so I can try it on as I go. Four, one that I can use the yarn already own.

Knitting for me is mostly a process, if I finish a project or don't finish the project isn't as important as the making of it.  But, sometimes I wonder if I think that because my finished projects do not live up to my expectations.  I'll have to give that a lot of thought, when a project I make turns out I'm pretty darn happy. When it does not live up to expectations I put it in a time out that lasts forever.  Also, I'm getting a bit tired of wearing sweaters that I did not make and don't fit right.

Okay so onto the project I'm going to choose, first make it in the same style as Joji Locatelli, Even Flow sweater, which matches one of my favorite wraps.

Even Flow by Joji Locatelli

Thinking about using one of these yarns.

The steps, are knitting a large enough swatch that I know what size to make, so that it in fact fits properly.  I often skip this step or hurry through it because I want to start the project, but that ends up costing me a lot of time in the long run, because after months of knitting the sweater doesn't fit and moves to the time out box. Which to the knitter makes complete sense, but to the non-knitter makes no sense. In their minds they must think why would you make something that doesn't fit, when you have everything you can to ensure it will fit.

The knitter then says, well when you put it that way of course that makes sense, but in our rush to the actual garment knitting we lose sight of that. I won't even go into why we knit on knowing it is never going to fit....