Begin Again, Better

 Last summer, right before vacation started, I was doing the pre-trip shopping and decided to give in to an impulse to buy yarn for a new sweater. I stopped in at the local yarn shop and when the owner asked what I wanted, I told her I wanted to knit a sweater in DK weight yarn, and maybe it could be a cardigan. That is pretty broad, but she was up to the task and showed me many options, along with samples of how those yarns looked when knit into a project.

There were so many good options, but a cotton/linen knubby yarn caught my attention. Then I needed to choose a color. The grandchildren know that when we are playing a game like Sorry or Monopoly, I always choose yellow. But I have never made anything for myself in that color. This yarn came in a beautiful goldenrod color, and I bought enough for a cardigan.

Before the trip I searched through patterns until I found one I loved. It was paid for, downloaded, printed, and in page protectors in a sturdy three ring binder long before my clothes were packed.

As we drove, I knitted swatches with different sizes of needles until I had the right size to get the correct number of stitches per inch.  I often knit too tightly and rarely can use the size of needles suggested in the pattern, so checking this is important.

By the time we were at the camp site I had cast on and begun the sweater. I knitted while we listened to audio books, or when we took long breaks to enjoy the scenery.

I've continued to work on it since then, sometimes pretty faithfully, and sometimes taking breaks. It has been a challenging pattern, with lace at the borders along the bottom and fronts. I made a lot of mistakes and painstakingly unraveled stitch by stitch, especially on those long bottom lace rows. It was so easy to get involved in the audio book or in conversation and then count wrong by just one stitch, throwing off the lace pattern in an obvious way. 

Finally I had the sweater done except for the sleeves. 

And it doesn't fit. It is too small.

I have tried to convince myself that aggressive blocking will redeem the sweater, but I wasn't truly convinced. This evening while talking with one of my daughters, she gently told me that I already knew what I had to do. 

So I've done it. First I checked again to see if I was getting the correct number of stitches per inch. I was off, still knitting too tightly. The problem was in the choice of needles and not in the pattern, which is good, because I still want to use this pattern.

Tomorrow I will start again.

Actually, I've done this before, making a lot of progress on a sweater before realizing I did not like it or it wasn't fitting the way I thought it would. It hasn't been as difficult to start again then as it was this time. But the joy of knitting is both the process and the result. I love making something beautiful. I love wearing what I made. I just won't be wearing it as soon as I'd originally thought.

Beginning again better seems to apply to more than sweaters. There is a phrase that is often used when talking about justice: When you learn better, do better.

With a sweater, there isn't shame or embarrassment attached to starting again, better. I have nothing to prove and nothing to gain by continuing with a sweater that will never fit me. 

Admitting I'm wrong and starting again with other things is harder. Trying things when I might fail is scarier. Maybe it is not too late to learn to do that better as well.