torridly: making things

sweater finality

Hell yes that thing is in my closet and I made it. I’m terrible about finishing things in other areas of life (like cleaning, or reading only one book at a time, or writing things on tumblr when I say I am going to), but I am so far pretty good at finishing things I knit. It helps that I tend to choose patterns that don’t require much of the dreaded finishing work (sewing, weaving in a crazy number of tiny ends, etc). The sweater was knit in the round, so the only finishing I had to do was block this thing and stretch it out a bit. Here is what I learned about blocking:

• It will actually make the sleeves approximately the same size as your arms, instead of the size of both your arms stuck together plus some lumpy bits. Awesome. Thanks, blocking.
• It is hard to do in a bathtub that doesn’t seal correctly. Blocking involves a lot of warm water. For me it also involves a lot of periodic refilling of the bathtub.
• All of your towels will smell like wet sheep and alpacas after you block your sweater on them. This is kind of nasty.

I guess it’s not really final finality of the sweater, because I still need to find some sort of button to sew on the top. Over a long-sleeve shirt it’s a nice warm cozy sweater, although the cropped pattern means I’d have to add to it if I actually wanted it to close all the way. I think I’m okay with leaving it open, since part of finishing things is knowing when they’re good enough, even if they could be better. Also, it’s pretty itchy, which sort of sucks but was to be expected.

Next time I make a sweater I’m gonna try one with some more interesting stitches in it. It was really satisfying to see this one come together, but it was a boring slog to do it, especially that final sleeve.

The top photo is pre-blocking and the bottom photo is post-blocking, for what that’s worth. You can tell it got a little more fitted and that the parts that are curling inward in the top photo are now, thankfully, flat.

The bottom photo guest stars the Dirty Projectors, because I was singing along to them, because they rule, although they really should’ve made their name “The Dirty Projectors” and not just “Dirty Projectors” because people are going to call them that anyway. Definite articles are sometimes important! That is what I think about knitting and indie rock today. Also: I have discovered the Vaselines! Put them in your ears, they are good!