Thursday, August 23, 2007

Second chances

First of all, if you are reading this, I want to thank you for sticking with me through my inconsistent blogging: thank you, very much. Plus, you should know, it's really reassuring to see your lovely comments. I sincerely appreciate their humor and caring sentiments. I've become increasingly annoyed that Blogger won't allow me to respond by email to people's individual comments. Oh well. Maybe I'll just start commenting on other people's comments to keep the conversation rolling.


I've been knitting again. I'm making "Ribby"—the sweater I've referred to in my last few posts—and, so far, it's quite simple. I almost finished the back piece but was unhappy with the way I joined the third ball of yarn, so I frogged back to an inch or so below the armhole shaping. Below is a picture I took before ripping back, but you can see the poor join better in photo above. It's a horizontal line of uneven stitches.


The feeling of frogging was redemptive and freeing. The mistake doesn't matter. I can erase it. The sweater will be better because I made a choice to fix it. Still, it was a choice. Not fixing it would have also been fine because it's all a matter of my own needs and preferences. I'm not trying to please anyone else. I am free to choose either way. My actions. My time. My sweater.

I love knitting.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Woo-hoo, I'm the first to post! I like the front of this sweater with that elongating zipper. Does this sweater have a collar on it? I can't tell from the picture. This looks like it could be a very warm sweater with the right yarn.
I hope yours doesn't pill.

Are you going to use a different color for the sleeves?

Liz said...

It looks very snuggly. And you have a great attitude about the frogging/not frogging issue.

Kelly said...

I love it! I love the color and the way it's shaping up. I'm about 3 inches into the body on Rogue! I decided to make the Medium (thanks for making me buy the extra yarn) for the hips, take in the waist with shaping, and back to the medium for the bust. (this is rather than go with the small and then add short rows for bust shaping). I basically fit Medium on bust and shoulders, small on waist and hips. Anyhoo, I miss you and I miss knitting on Sat (although I've been too busy to go). Knitting is now a solo thing for me. I'll blog with photos this week. Love you!

Batty said...

Beautiful sweater. And an important lesson learned from it! It's easy to forget in the worlds of academia, where success and failure are fairly black and white categories and the definition of each is provided by other people. It's easy to forget that sometimes, what is failure to others may not be failure to you, and that it is an option. With knitting, it's easy, part of the learning experience. You can always frog and re-knit (unless you accidentally felted it, in which case, it can still be turned into coasters). With life, it can be more difficult to see.

Anonymous said...

You may be interested in getting intouch with Vivian Kleinnmon of Berkley Ca. You can tell her you got her name from her friend Yochi Gordon from Israel Yochi met yourGrandmother while visiting her old friend Naomi at Oatfield. This lady makes documentary films in and is fluent in Yidish. You can Google for her adress. I'm not a knitter so there.
Apple

Anonymous said...

I like this pattern very much. It's very you, Amanda, with the wide ribing and shapeliness and so on. You'll look good in it. Woo!

Anonymous said...

Amanda,
I'm posting to tell you that I hope you see now all the fans that you have who read your blog and love to hear about your knitting/scholastic/general life adventures. You see, all the work it goes into running a blog is worth it when everybody responds! You have 7 responses--And not even half if those are made up of family members--Ha! That's success.

P.S. I saw some beautiful and cheap yarn ($11 or so for a royal purple kid merino--a tad itchy--and $6 for a dark fuschia similar to kid merino--both wannabes of Rowan Kidsilk Haze) in San Francisco. I have been thinking about them for weeks, and may buy one in order to make the same mohair lace scarf I made earlier this summer. That's the only wearable success story of my knitting career! I very well may give up on that blue malabrigo monstrosity. $30 down the drain!
What should I do?