Ruthless Knitting

Buster is done, and it’s the best thing I’ve ever knit.

Buster required a lot of do-overs. I knit the back, ripped the top few rows and shortened the back, knit the front, knit one sleeve, seamed it in, unseamed it, ripped out and reknit the top half of the sleeve, ripped the top few rows and lengthened the back, ripped the top few rows and lengthened the front, knit the second sleeve, seamed it in, seamed in the other sleeve, ripped out the first sleeve and seamed it in again, finished all the seaming, knit in a 1×1 rib neckband, ripped it out, knit a 2 x 2 rib neckband with a center stitch, ripped it out, knit a 2 x 2 rib neckband with no center stitch, ripped it out, knit a 2 x 2 crossover neckband, and finally removed and reknit the cuffs. Along the way, I blocked most of the pieces of the sweater three times.

You could say that I was committed to getting Buster right. And you know what? It was totally worth it.

One thing this project taught me was that I know enough now to know when something I’ve knit didn’t come out right. The challenge for me is to accept it and then do what it takes to fix it, especially when I’ve already invested a lot of time in the wrong thing. David helps me with this. When I showed him the first iteration of the neckband, which I suspected was all wrong but then decided was maybe okay when I tried it on, he said, “It doesn’t look as polished as the rest of the sweater.” I was disappointed, but I knew he was right. I ripped it out. I had to try four different styles of V-neck before I found one that looked just so with the rest of the sweater.

This two-steps-forward, one-step-back process is, I’m coming to understand, the only way to achieve excellence when you design your own sweaters. In fact, it’s probably the only way to achieve excellence in knitting, since you have to get gauge just right and make adjustments and corrections even when you knit other people’s patterns. It is, of course, frustrating as hell when you just want it to be finished. I’m trying to learn to master the impulse to race to the finish, since in the long run it really doesn’t matter whether a sweater takes me one month or two to knit. In the long run, it only matters that I get it right.

Pattern: Buster, my own design
Size: 37″ chest, 14″ to underarm, 8″ underarm depth and V-neck depth, 15.5″ from wrist to underarm
Yarn: Nashua Creative Focus Worsted in camel, brilliant blue, harvest, and copper
Yardage: 4.5 balls camel; half a ball of copper; less than half a ball of the rest
Yarn Source: Monterey Yarn in Green Bay and Iris Fine Yarns in Appleton, WI
Needles: bamboo straights in size 6 for body; size 6 circular for neckband; size 5 dpns for sleeve cuffs
Gauge: 19.5 stitches and 31 rows over 4 inches in stockinette
Notes: Though I love Buster dearly, there are a few things I would do differently were I to knit it again:

(1) I would add a little bit of waist shaping.
(2) I would do short rows for the shoulder shaping and sleeve cap shaping rather than binding off stitches.
(3) I would deal differently with the places in the pattern where two lines of gold come together at the center of an X and then move apart again.
(4) I might reconsider the yarn choice. My design process began with the inspiration from television and then stalled until I saw these colors — the brilliant blue and copper — sitting on the shelf at Monterey Yarn. The colors became essential to my vision of the sweater, and I don’t think I could have replicated them in another yarn. Since Nashua Creative Focus is a single ply and fairly loosely spun, however, I expect this sweater will get pretty pilly, which I prefer to avoid if I can.

All of these are fairly minor problems in the grand scheme of things, and they don’t hamper my enjoyment of the sweater. They’re just things I’ll keep in mind as I move on to the next design.

References: Other posts about Buster are here and here, with a little bit here.