Sometime since the last, April, post, I made a stupid decision. I decided not to maintain separate blogs, and abandoned this blog soon after just having started up again. I realize now this was a mistake, a mistake brought on more by my exhaustion and frustration going through chemo than anything about either blogging or knitting. Throughout this process, my thoughts and impulses are all over the map.
I realize now that this was simply due to the fact that I was overwhelmed and sick and feeling incapable of maintaining much of anything. I was sick pretty much for six weeks, exhausted, unable to breathe and mostly unable to do much. It is possible that the tide has turned, and my turn with Taxol will be easier. The first two weeks were hell, but then I was also sick with a bacterial infection and my body was simply overwhelmed. Yet I am still here, still fighting. I have to endure five more weeks of poison and then perhaps things will start to fall back into place. Perhaps some of that, like this blog, can start now.
Conveniently, I can pick up right where I left off, with the sweater called Blueberry Season.
When last I wrote, I had just begun this sweater, had only knit a few inches of the body. Despite the fact that it was knit on large, size 13 needles, I did not finish until the end of June, happily knitting two or four rows each evening, but often too tired to manage more than that small amount.
I did run out of some of the yarns after finishing the body, and only had very limited amounts remaining of some others, so I weighed and divided the remaining yarns in order to guarantee that the sleeves would be balanced and have the same striping sequence. Even if they did not exactly match the body of the sweater, they could, at least, match each other.
That worked out well, although there were a couple of yarns which I just barely stretched across the necessary knitting, ending up with only a couple of inches, just enough to weave in perhaps, at the end of a row. As challenging as this was, it was also thrilling and a relief. What a joy to use every last inch of something!
And yet, although the sweater is technically "finished", or at least I have declared it so on both Ravelry and the other, more general blog, it is not really finished. Something feels unsettled, and I am not happy. with the finishing. The sweater has not been put in my sweater drawer where it can patiently await fall. Instead, it is languishing in a messy pile on the loveseat in the sewing room.
I mentioned the finishing. That is somewhat misleading. I love the narrow knitted band, and it is the most successful of several variations on knitted bands I tried. I wish I had noted them and shared them with you, but I did not, and I cannot resurrect that data now. My issue is actually with the inside finishing. There are many many threads, many which cannot be safely woven in without also being knotted, many that threaten to escape their bounds and drive me crazy.
I contemplate a facing, thinking that will make the sweater feel more polished. It may also help it to hang more gracefully. When I contemplate the facing I then also wonder if I should face the hem as well. That would require a wider facing than the front band. A faced hem would mean that the bottom would not roll up as it does now. A part of me likes the roll, another part of me hates it, and at this point no side has really won, but I am leaning toward straighter and more polish. I wonder if I should perhaps simply line the entire sweater, making into more of a jacket than a slouchy old thing. Or am I actually yearning for something this sweater can never achieve? I admitted at the beginning that it was going to be possessed of more slouch than polish, Did I misjudge my own sartorial inclinations, or have they too evolved as it seems every other part of me has evolved over the last few months.
I have managed to avoid these issues for nearly two months now, but I do actually want to wear this sweater. It is nearly September and autumnal weather will eventually arrive. Granted I did not really venture into the sewing room for a couple of months. I had some lymphatic cord issues after surgery and could not lift an iron for two months, could not stand at the table and cut or pin, certainly not press. For a while I was too exhausted and too out of breath to climb the stairs. Convenient excuses to avoid indecision. But that has changed. Now to move forward.