Thinking About Knitting

I have been thinking about knitting a sweater for myself. I haven't knit one in years... ever since I bought my first L.L. Bean fleece jacket. Light fleece jackets are so warm... Perfect for everyday wear in our coolish house. In addition, they are machine washable and dry-able, unlike most sweaters.

But recently I saw some tweed yarn I liked and began looking for a pattern...

I found one... but the sleeves are wider than I want. Could I trust myself to modify the pattern to make them narrower? Or would I end up ruining the whole fit?

These questions led me to the public library and a knitting book on modifying sweater sizes. First you determine the size of the garment you want, then you modify the basic pattern...

There are charts to fill out and, of course, calculations about stitch sizes... All this sounds very complicated. It occurs to me, as I read this, that one of the reasons my knit garments often didn't fit the way I had hoped in the past was exactly because of this! I didn't like to make the extra effort to work all this out...

On the other hand, it might be fun to try to actually design a sweater that fits perfectly!

(The one in this pattern is knit side to side... I've never done that!)











  

The woman who wrote this book - and the group of women who contributed patterns and samples (the "twisted sisters") - are women who spin and dye their own yarn before knitting it - so their yarn isn't a standard machine-made size...

Browsing through this book - and another the author wrote on knitting socks with hand spun yarn - I think of my mother's spinning and dyeing days.

(We still have one of her spinning wheels in the basement as well as some un-spun wool.)

I don't know if she made any sweaters out of yarn she spun, but she would have found this book interesting, I'm sure.