After a decade of knitting, with a ravenous appetite for the clicking of needles over the past two years, I’ve finally leaped over a huge hurdle I’ve been dreading and ventured into my first sweater pattern. I’ve held off on this feat out of fear of putting so much time, effort, and cash into a project and not have it fit in the end. It would be traumatic for me and could quite possible land me in the loony bin for a few months.
After being teased for a while that I hadn’t made a sweater I realized I finally do have knitters in my life that are more than willing to dive in and help me out if I get stuck, and they’ve actually knitted entire, fitting, sweaters before. I’m typically a stubborn ass that hates to ask for help, these knitters know that too, but if I walked in the door with a project with a glazed-over look in my eyes they would just take the needles from me and walk me through it. So, that began to start the wheels turning.
I found a pattern I fell in love with the moment I saw it. It’s on open front sweater coat with raglan sleeves called Adventurous. I’ve been told despite the massive amount of cable work that this is actually pretty forgiving when it comes to fit. So the wheels began to move faster.
After pricing out the yarn for this project the breaks where slammed into the floorboards. The yardage I needed, plus the quality of yarn I wanted made this adventure cost prohibitive. Even if this is my first sweater, good yarn really makes a difference in a project, and of course I fell in love with Malabrigo’s Arroyo. $140ish in yarn for a project I’m terrified to start…yeah….ummmm….not right now. I put a smart-assed post up on Facebook saying if anyone wanted to fund this project I would actually start it. Not five minutes after the post was made, and before I had even left the yarn shop, their phone rang and a gift card in my name for the cost of the yarn and then some was called in. I not only pooped a kitten right there in the floor (it’s meowing at me and has been named Severus, and that’s a story for another day) but now I had absolutely no excuse to not start this project. The wheels on the bus to sweaterville where speeding down the on-ramp to the interstate.
The yarn has arrived, it had to be ordered to get all of the same dye lot, the first two skeins have been wound into cakes and the first of many, many cable repeats was completed this evening. Wish me luck folks – so far it looks good – but I’m still terrified.
Rough Purls 