My first sweater is finished now, and has been done for a week or so. And I am grateful for the overcast days, with the swallows flying low and a breeze slightly chilly, which have made it possible to wear my sweater. I have been pairing it with my first pair of pants that I sewed in January. There are still a lot of firsts on my journey of garment making, but I have come a long way, too! Last year in May, I sewed my very first dress and knit my first shawl after a long time. I remember thinking how nice it would be to be wrapped in selfmade clothes. Fast forward a year and now I have enough pieces that were made by me to create a few outfits. And I am far from done.
Here are a few musings on knitting a sweater. If you are a knitter, I am sure you will be able to relate. If you are not a knitter, I hope I can shine some light on the process.
When it comes to knitting a sweater or anything, really, mistakes will be made. And the question is, how they are going to be resolved. In knitting, at least, solving problems will build a whole set of rescue skills, which can be more important than the making itself.
A sweater knit by your very own hands is also a good cure for perfectionism. The mistakes I’ve made along the way have left markings. Small ones, mostly only visible for me. But I will recognize that sweater anywhere. Its flaws make it unique. Now read on if you want to be a flaw-detector.

The hassle of the first three rounds. Is real. The first three rounds are no joke. Especially when you want to be fancy like me and do the twisted ribbing thing. Twisted ribbing in itself is easy, but throw them on the first three rounds and you will ask yourself why you wanted to be fancy in the first place. Let’s see if I can remember all of the reasons why I started over.
First attempt: I wasn’t overthinking or trying to avoid possible causes for error yet, so I just cast on my stitches on 16” circulars and started knitting. Twisted ribbing and all. The 16” circulars seemed a little too short and made the stitches tight. But that’s what the instructions said, so I tried those. I think I then dropped two stitches. With twisted ribbing, rescuing stitches gets a little tricky. At least for me. I would love to meet a pro stitch rescuer to teach me stitch recovery properly. That would save me from a lot of frustration. But then again, I wouldn’t have much more to write about for the first three rounds. I would have happily knit on.
Second attempt: I thought I was smart by using double point needles for the cast-on. I cast my stitches on and started the twisted ribbing. I have used DPN’s before and thought that I had become immune to the twist. You know, when there is one needle twisted so that the knitting becomes this moebius like thing. It’s not what you had in mind and everything just gets terribly twisted. I had to get untangled.
Third attempt: Not sure if I was done with DPN’s yet or if I tried them again, but I cast on my stitches, which I usually do on two needles and when I tried to get one needle out, I also pulled off a bunch of stitches. I tried to cast them back on. And failed.
Fourth attempt: Probably on circulars this time as I did not want to deal with the DPN twist again AND the instructions said that they would work, I cast on my stitches and started knitting the first round. This time it didn’t seem so tight for the circulars. I happily knit until I realized that there was about an inch of slack yarn between two cast on stitches. Again, I would love to know a pro knit rescuer in person!
Fifth attempt: This sweater won’t start itself and I know that there will be happy knitting in my near future. If I just make it past these cursed first three rounds! On my 16” circulars I cast on my stitches, making sure that they are snuggled together, but not too tight so that I can get one needle out. Slowly, I knit my twisted ribbing. The first three rounds and then all the way to the end. Here we are, I am knitting my first sweater!

After the ribbing, the instructions say to increase by a few stitches, which I do not in the way recommended, but I have the required stitches so I don’t care. I also end up with two more than required. I rehome them in the front and back of the body, which evens out my numbers.
Then there are the raglan increases. Those are the neat ‘seams’ at the front and back that determine where your body back and front and sleeves of the sweater will be. It sounds so sophisticated, but really, all it means is that there are four markers where you knit front and back on each side of the marker. Placing the markers though, gave me a short sweat when the numbers just weren’t right. Then I remembered that I was knitting the light version. Fingering vs. Worsted (I’m talking about yarn weight here.) I invariably had to have more stitches. I pulled up the right instructions and figured it out. Why do there have to be so many numbers in knitting?
At some point I switch from 16” to 32” circulars. After the increases, I knit and knit and knit until a certain length. Then the sleeve stitches get a break on waste yarn while the body is being knit. My numbers are a little weird. As in my sleeves neither have the same amount of stitches, nor the amount of stitches the instructions said I should have. I think that I will be smart later and procrastinate on math for a bit. And then I want to be fancy again and use a leather cord to place my sleeve stitches on. What a lot of fiddling that is! Next time I will use a darning needle and some waste yarn, as per instructions. Instructions are your friend, just listen.
Now that it’s just the body, I am in the part of the sweater where I sit and knit for miles and miles and hours of miles. When I run out of my first yarn ball, I decide to try the alternating skein thingy. It takes me two or three rounds to figure out how to knit one stitch with both skeins each time to avoid weird looking tiny knot creatures that also move to the right. Now I have this braid on one side. Is this how you do the skein alternating? Then, after hours and miles I am at the point of desired length. I am doing the cropped version and I am short and I want the sweater over dresses and with skirts and high waist pants, so I am cropping just a little more, which makes the sweater not that long at all. Too excited about the ribbing part, I forget to switch to smaller circulars. The first round of ribbing has huge stitches now. I can block that out, right?

Now back to the sleeves. Earlier I had realized that one stitch didn’t make it on the leather cord. Hanging in there, without turning into a stitch on the run, I rescued it by replacing the leather cord with waste yarn, woven through by a tapestry needle. How satisfying! Anyways, the numbers still were a little off. I matched the stitches to the required number by picking up two more stitches at the under arm part. I had already put up one more stitch there when casting on at the underarm, which made it easier to squeeze in one more stitch. Numbers matched. I felt so accomplished! Then it’s cruising along on DPN’s for a desired length again. After the size of the body, these few stitches make the rounds fly. And then there is the part where you have to remember where you are, because a certain amount of decreases is asked for over a certain amount of rounds. Decrease two and then six rounds of knitting even. I made a chart where I could do tallies to know where I was. Genius! Sometimes I would also count the needles in my head.
After the decreases are done, you are supposed to knit a few rounds even. But I like shorter sleeves and I like my wrists free, so I do the ribbing right away. Besides, if I were knitting even rounds, I would have to figure out how many that were by the time I am knitting the second sleeve.

Speaking of the second sleeve
When it comes to making two sleeves that are exactly the same in the amount of rounds and stitches, well, I tried my best. But the second sleeve had two more stitches at the end. Who knows where they came from? And I started the ribbing two rounds too early. I wasn’t paying that much attention anymore and made a mistake I only realized when I was ready to bind off. I chose to bind off rather than doing some frogging again and then getting frustrated with it.
My other frogging experience, the one from the same day, resulted in a round of twisted stitches. I could have back knit for one round to smooth them out, but I just didn’t have the heart. And I chose this twisted round as a reminder that when it comes to rescuing stitches or correcting something in knitting, there is no shortcut. I wanted to avoid endless back knitting and did some frogging to save time. Well, I probably spent as much time rescuing all of the stitches and got them twisted along the way.

To provide a timeline: it took me three weeks to knit the sweater. I sat down daily, mostly for a few hours, speckled throughout the day, and sometimes I could just squeeze in a few rounds at a time. And then it took me over a week to block my sweater, weave in the ends and close the holes at the underarm.
After I had blocked my sweater, I realized that the bind-off at the bottom of the sweater was too tight. As in I had a hard time getting in and out of there tight. I reached out on the socials for support and was recommended a super stretchy bind-off. It worked like a charm and made me very happy and the sweater put-on-able.

You see, once I was done with those finishing steps, the sweater would be completed, and in a new stage. I will get to WEAR it and have it be part of my wardrobe. It’s exciting! But the sweater also seems a little too precious to be worn. My dad instilled in me the value of preserving valued objects, which is a good thing. But he exaggerated it to the point of these objects having no trace of being used. Especially when it came to books. I took this to heart, which resulted in my books not being broken at the back, I opened them just enough so that I could read. No dog-ears! (We call them donkey-ears, which I prefer.) Nothing marked or written in there. And special pieces of clothing were only meant to be worn for special occasions, which resulted in me rarely wearing them.

It has taken quite some unlearning to allow myself to wear my most treasured pieces of clothing often. They are meant to be worn and to look used. Those markings tell the stories of a life well lived. I also felt so rebellious when I put donkey-ears in the Georgia O’Keeffe book to mark the pages where she said something I want to return to. It’s a used book anyways, with the smell of an old book, a broken back and everything.
I think it comes back to leaving a marking. And being ok with doing so.

sweater pattern : FlaxLight by tincanknits

https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/flax-light

tutorial : https://blog.tincanknits.com/2013/10/25/lets-knit-a-sweater

sweater yarn : Foxy Lady in Hill Country by Farmer’s Daughter Fibers

https://thefarmersdaughterfibers.com/products/foxy-lady

super stretchy bind-off : https://cocoknits.com/blogs/knit-tutorials/how-to-work-jenys-stretchy-bind-off

pant pattern : Arthur Pants by SewLiberated

https://sewliberated.com/products/arthur-pants-digital-sewing-pattern

pant fabric : deadstock wool from blackbird fabrics

tutorial : https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6kF9mgicJyU