Knitting Defensively: A Spring Resolution

Speaking of socks(because isn't everyone speaking of socks?), I'm going to cast on for a plain old pair as travel knitting out of this delicious skein.  I want to knit my ballet neck cardigan, I want to make progress on PS136, but since I am going to be spending much of the next three days following a small boy around the houses of cousins and through museums, I think mindless, don't-have-to-look-at-it socks is the perfect thing to take with me.  And that's all. That's right, I am only going to take one project to knit for my four day trip.  Not like Juno, who arrived for the two day weekend with four knitting projects in tow (hey, I understand: you just never know what mood might strike, but four? kidding).  For me, just one.  I will be extra careful not to forget anything essential to knitting socks, and therefore, I will only need just one thing to knit.  Besides, there are knitting stores in Chicago (thanks for the advice everyone who chimed in), but I am unlikely to be too impulsive, because I have a new knitting ethos. 

I've been blogging for almost a year now, and one of the side effects of blogging for me has been how dissatisfied I have been with my own knitting lately. Silly as it may seem, competent a knitter as I am, spoiled by good fortune and great yarn stores and a generous friends as I have been, I keep knitting stuff I don't like. This must be, I have decided, because I have many more motivations for knitting a sweater than I ever thought about before.

1. I knit some sweaters because everyone else is knitting them:  It's true, I knit some sweaters because everyone else is knitting them.  When I first started blogging, the knit-along phenomenon caught me up, and I found it great fun to race through the same sweater that everyone else was knitting. It was the community of it all, the competition perhaps of finishing in the front of the pack, the hopes that a sweater so popular must be universally flattering.  But finally -- on the brink of buying $170 dollars worth of Silk Garden -- I realized as a six foot tall woman with a size 18 butt, that Karalund's horizontal midriff just isn't the right thing for me.

2. I knit some sweaters because I am impulsive and disorganized:  Because the yarn spoke to me in the yarn store, through colour or texture, there was something about that yarn that made me want to knit with it, and I rifled through the patterns on hand (never able to remember what is bookmarked in the library at home) and found something suitable.  When this gets home, I often file them away and maybe never even start them.  The glamour of the impulse buy wears off, the yarn and the pattern become separated never to be re-united, and ultimately, perhaps, I knit the yarn into something else, something bookmarked in the library, and have gobs left over, or not enough to finish.

3: I knit some sweaters because I want to look like someone else: I dream about these sweaters.  They were in a magazine or a Rowan book, and I wear holes in the pages stroking the paper covetously, wanting the sweater for my own, wanting the sweater because somehow I think that it will make me look more like the slim model with the perfectly disheveled hair, perhaps, in the right light, with a stylist on hand.  And when I finish those sweaters, I put them on and I am disappointed because there is nothing about the sweater that is flattering.  These sweaters have waistlines that can't find mine, or accentuate my mommy tummy, or fail to cover my pantylines in the yoga pants I insist on wearing because nothing else is comfortable (this from a woman who at 16 thought sans-a-belt pants advertized on The Price is Right were gross, and that women in doubleknit slacks should be floated out to sea. What a little twit I was.  The comfort of Yoga pants must be the revenge of Sears and Roebuck.)

4: I knit some sweaters because I need them: Knowing when I embark on the journey of that sweater, often a arctic stretch of stockinette without texture or colour play, that this sweater will be good for the wardrobe.  I think of Norma's Pure Vanilla as a good example, since I have none to show of my own because I never finish them.  There's a finished back for a black cashmere cardigan hanging in a grocery bag on a doorknob in the parlor.  Someday I'll get to the right front.

5: I knit some sweaters because they are fulfilling:  Some sweaters, a very few sweaters, are the kind of sweater that my friends say "Oh, that's so YOU."  All of these sweaters have a family resemblance, it's true.  There's a lot of colour somewhere in them, from a fair-isle border, or intarsia about the hemline.  They all float free of the body,  and they are all difficult, in the general scale of knitting difficulty. So they are rare.  I knit them for fun, and I wear them for the same reason.  I don't care about how big they make me look, because really, they are quite by accident the right scale and shape for me.  These are favorites, and most of them in my sweater stack are over ten years old.  So why haven't I knit one of these for awhile?  Well, I have hopes that PS 136 will turn out to be one.  And I have fallen madly in love with Di Gilpin's Little Wing Jacket from the Shorelines book (I have a copy because I have a thoughtful friend who picked it up for me in the UK).  These sweaters take longer to make, and I've been hungry for quick pay-offs lately, as in, the most recent two years of my life.

I was reading Kay's thoughts about her most recent finished garment, unhappy as she is with the gestalt of sleeve cables, and I knew very well what it was she was saying.    I will knit no more sweaters that I stuff in the drawer to be willfully overlooked.  I will think these things through, I will keep a want to knit journal and carry it in my purse,  I will resist the pretty yarn and chic photography and the peer pressure, I will embrace the Zen of Margene, and I will knit defensively.  I am vowing from henceforth the get my quick fixes from socks, and to be more disciplined about the sweaters I choose to knit. 

Would someone make me a button, please?  I think this needs a button.

 

Comments

[melanie]

Right on mama! (oh, that we could all look like the rowan models...*sigh*)

[Emma.]

Very good thoughts on a knitting dilema we all face.
Little Wings is so very 'you',and will be very flattering and totally fabulous on you.

[Abbey]

i love knitting socks, and I love the Opal sock yarn too. I'm getting ready to knit a pair in some brown/pink Opal that I bought. What size needle are you using for them? I think I'm going to need zeros.

[Kim]

Great post Julia.....I think as knitters, we are all guilty of knitting for the wrong reasons at one time or another.

I am working on a vest that I have come to HATE. I dislike the yarn, I can already see that the fit is not going to be great (cables and big boobs........what WAS I thinking..LOL). I will finish this one......but this will be the last project that I will knit if I am not enjoying the process........at least I hope it will be...LOL.

[June]

Oh, I so identify with #3. Especially when I look at anything worn by that petite beautiful girl who is the feature model in Interweave Knits.

[margene]

Finally at my age (cough, cough) knitting what looks good on me has finally happened in the last few years. I knit for nearly 20 and kept only a few sweaters. Then I did only socks for 5-6 years. Now I think I know (maybe, maybe) what works for me and what doesn't. Socks are a perfect way to find quick satisfaction while we knit our perfect (for us) sweaters.

[Katie]

A woman I know, who is a textile art professor, once told me that it takes years of knitting before you can look at a pattern and really decide if it is right for you - it is so easy to be dazzled by what other people are knitting or the magazine layout - I'm certainly still learning this myself. I've also learned to put one hand over the model's face when looking at designs in knitting magazines - I'm always surprised at how it changes how I feel about the sweater I'm looking at!

[Susan]

Well-said!!!! I'm much like you and you are not alone!!! Wish I'm just like one of the models but knowing myself that my size is completely different from them. Sighs!!

[Liz]

Bravo! Little Wings looks beautiful.

[Dani]

This is a very interesting post. I can't really identify with it but I admire your ability to look within yourself and understand the reasons that you knit things.

[Wendy]

You can size your butt?! Is there a Universal sizing system with a Board and all? How do they manage to keep the pervs off the Board? Heeheheh. Goofy mood this morning.

[Juno]

No, no, only THREE projects for a two day weekend - FOUR pairs of shoes.

So you're going to have a un-knit-along? A choose-right-along? A self-actuallization-along? What you're talking about is the same thing as learning to shop for what you actually look like instead of what you wish you looked like *or* think you look like. In many cases, three very different things. Sometimes it is hard, very hard.

#4 and #5 are very good reasons though.

Have a good trip -

[Lee Ann]

I didn't knit a thing for ten years because I kept knitting big sacklike things, and grew to hate everything I made. I finally realized that the combination of (a) a knitted potato sack, (b)my substantial shoulders, (c) significant curvy bits, and (d) being only five feet tall, did not create the vision of knitwear loveliness I had in my mind when I created the damned thing, no matter how elaborate the colourway, the stitch pattern.... Rather, it created the undesirable illusion that I was somebody's little brother trying to get on the football team just by stealing his uniform. Go, Fair Isle Falcons...Now, Kay's sweater was far more shaped than the sweaters of ten or fifteen years ago, but I can sympathize with her sudden realization that cables down the arms add heft. Been there, agonized over that. (I think the sweater looks good but I know what she means, and if you don't feel good in something, the hell with it.)

I have to reign myself in every time I look at Rowan in particular. (Made a lot of Rowan sacks. Gave them all away. No more.) Shaping is key. If it doesn't look like it could fit to my shape, it can't go on me. And with only a small portion of five feet to work with, that's not a lot of sweater. I'm very happy to see that some designers are taking femaleness into consideration. That said, what is up with that bellybutton thing...mannnn...I say Just Don't Knit A Britney. Or a Klaralund if you are not Stick-Girl. The colours of that yarn are beautiful, but if there is one thing I do not need, it is multicoloured silken graffiti across my belly announcing "Baby Was Here." I'm totally with you on that one.

Knitting for the Real You. (Sorry...I feel like I'm channelling Dr. Phil or something...) But it's an excellent goal. Wicked hard to do. I'll join you, though. I'm up for a challenge even if I can't make the button for it. :-)

[Janine]

Oh, well said! I've been puzzling over these problems myself, determined to slow down a bit to determine what I need, what looks good on me AS I AM, and what I would enjoy knitting. I'm determined that all future projects will answer all three of those questions. I'll tell you--I've really cut down on my yarn purchases as a result!

[larissa]

How funny - before I got to the end I was thinking we all need a button that says Knitting Flattering Sweaters Since 2005. I'm going to try the Hourglass Sweater for this very reason, even though it doesn't look as fun as some others.

[Julia]

I have knit for all the same reasons as you. I guess that's why I haven't done many sweaters lately. I have the additional challenge of "guilt knitting", knitting for others because I feel selfish always knitting for myself, even though I am the only one I know who knows how to care for handknit items. Socks are a great quick fix project and they don't kill your budget quite so badly. I have learned that the cost of the yarn has become one of my self-limiting criteria for whether I should knit it. I am still trying to figure a way to justify knitting the Nothing But a T-shirt pattern using over 90 dollars worth of Calmer. Let's see...knit a t-shirt or send child to college? hmmm? I'll let you know what I decide.

[Kay]

Can't wait for the button.

Well, I can wait, but I like the idea. How about 'screw you Rowan, I'm knitting socks!'

I'm still knitting 'aspirational' sweaters, however. They'll just have set-in sleeves.

My ultimate defensive knitting is stuff for babies. Babies look cute in any sleeve. There's always some baby to be knit for.
xoxo Kay

[Chris]

Good stuff to think on. Have you considered designing your own sweaters? I'm about to embark on my first, using The Sweater Workshop as my guide. Don't know that I'll be satisfied with the end result, but I know I'll be progressing in my knitting, so I'll have that at least.

[Beth S.]

Well said! I suspect the answer to the great existential knitting dilemma (if there is an answer at all...) can be found over at Chicknits. Bonne Marie has it all figured out; virtually everything she makes fits her to a T and looks fantastic (and if it doesn't, she fearlessly rips it out and starts over.) She has a knack for designing stuff that fits her, and for adapting commercial patterns to her own unique shape. If we could all rework patterns the way she does, there would be no more knitting disasters, angels would sing, and all the planets would align. ;-) We wouldn't have to avoid lovely projects like Klaralund, we'd just figure out how to make them work for us. Gosh, that would be liberating!

[Julia]

I loved this post. Blogging can really change your motivations for choosing projects both for the better and the worse. I made Audrey because everyone was making it. It's not a sweater I would have chosen and yet ultimately it's one of my favorites. On the other end of the spectrum I've made several things that I wouldn't have that I'm not really interested in at all. Last fall I got to the point where I swore off paying as much attention to blogging and made a point of not making things if I saw them everywhere else until some time had passed. If I still need something after six months, I can make it then. I've also become much more committed to my own designs and creative process. Keeping yourself centered with others watching is always a balancing trick, but if we take the time to evaluate what we like making and why we like it, it all works out in the end. I almost think of our little blogging community as a high school class. At first we're all figuring out who's cool and where we fit in - there's a lot of social pressure. After a while you find your niche, return to yourself, and graduate with a nice group of friends.

[Clementine]

I'm way behind in my blog reading, as per usual, but I just wanted to say I loved this post and all the comments- some real food for thought.
I've been watching alot of the british TV show "What not to wear", and aside from being a real hoot it's really made me far more aware of what I should be spending my time knitting and sewing for myself to wear.
This leads to being more realistic with myself about why I really want to try making whatever-it-is. There are occasions when the reason for making it is to explore techniques and challenge your skills, and this is good!
Spotting the REAL reason why you want to make something though is definitely an acquired skill requiring lots of practice! (and I'm sure a button would help!)