sweater project nearing completion!

[arguchik]

i thought i would post some photos of the sweater project i'm finishing up. it will be a late-ish birthday gift for glaucon. as you'll see from the photos, the sweater does not have a collar yet; i have to add that (it will be knitted in the round) after sewing all of the seams. each panel still has a certain number of live stitches at the top--those metal things that look like big safety pins are stitch holders. they keep the live stitches from unraveling. the collar, which will probably be a turtleneck (because that's what glaucon requested, though the pattern calls for a crew neck, and i may have to revert to that if the turtleneck doesn't look right), will grow out of those live stitches, plus a few that i will create along the top of the front panel.

it is really something to put a big project like this together--really satisfying. i'm excited to finish it. i have knitted a number of whole sweaters before: a total of 4--one adult sized, which i knitted for myself in the early 90's, and 3 of varying child sizes for the nieces and nephews i had at the time (my youngest niece had not been born yet). it has been awhile!

a professor once gave me a valuable piece of advice: when asked for a good graduate school survival tip, he said, "get a hobby." he was right. i guess i have 2 hobbies. knitting and running, taken together, give me plenty of tactile and somatic, soothing and meditative activity as a counterbalance to thinking and writing, and especially to the stress of getting overwhelmed by the dissertation as a "whole project," to say nothing of what comes afterward... these two hobbies are both good metaphors for the kind of slow and steady work that gets a dissertation written, too: step by step. stitch by stitch. mile by mile. row by row.

word by word. page by page.

meh. i know it's cheesy, but it helps my self-confidence, so :-P TBBBBTTTBTHTHTH!





the 4 pieces together, taken a few days ago before i had completed the front panel.



here is the completed front panel.



here is the back panel.



here are the sleeves. (they are raglan sleeves.)



here is the first seam, which i completed last night. i'm using a mattress stitch to assemble this sweater. in the past, i have used a crocheted chain stitch, but it makes the seams bulkier, so i decided to go with the mattress stitch this time. my next sweater project will be knitted in the round, so i won't have any seams to sew.



here is a close-up of the first seam.



and here is a close-up of the brown-to-gray junction.

P.S. the stitch pattern is what's called an "english rib." on the right side, you work in K1-P1 ribbing, and on the wrong side you pearl all the way across. the result is a 1X1 knit-garter stitch rib, as opposed to regular 1X1 knit-purl ribbing. this gives the rib stitch a bit more texture in the "grooves," and also makes for a more open or relaxed ribbing. (regular 1X1 ribbing, which you'll see at the cuffs and hem--also the collar when i finish it--pulls in more.)

OK, back to work...

Comments

[malafrena.livejournal.com]

I had a completely opposite OCD reaction to knitting when I was in college. I tried to knit a Tom Baker scarf and got way too focused on it. I ended up giving away all my yarn and needles and throwing away the scarf and never touched knitting again. :)

So I am impressed by anyone who finds it soothing.

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

LOL--i had to look up "tom baker scarf" to see what you were talking about. i can see why a first project like that would drive a person to give up knitting forever.

:-D

[arguchik.livejournal.com]

p.s. did you see this (http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Zone/3746/Scarf.html)? someone spent waaaayyyy too much time analyzing the narrative trajectory of that scarf! so...if you were trying to knit the most up-to-date version of that scarf, i can see how that would be extra frustrating, especially if you happened to start from the end that kept changing.

hey...you didn't happen to write that website, did you?