dancing in the street

Never in my life have I been so glad to get a project off my needles and out of my hair.  Never have I had a project feel like it was just dragging on and on like this one.

This was supposed to be Iain’s birthday sweater for last year, when I came up with this sweet, sentimental idea that for their 13th birthdays my children should be allowed to design their own sweaters.  We had a couple of design meetings where it was determined that he wanted a solid bright green, zip front vest with pockets that buttoned closed, made from a worsted weight yarn.  I dog-eared my stitch dictionary marking off patterns that appealed to him.  At some point in the process he decided that he would like for it to be at least partially a surprise (it’s also entirely possible that he just wanted me to stop asking him so many darn questions and that he was just too polite to say so!) and so he left the details up to me.    Wanting to please him, I may have gone a little bit overboard, trying to use as many different stitch patterns as I could.  This boy is all about the texture.  He likes cables and bobbles and things of that sort.  I think I ended up using 10 different stitch patterns in all, switching patterns as often as seven times a row.

As I said at the start this was supposed to be his birthday sweater for last year.  But that was the winter I got really sick and stopped knitting at all.  When I finally picked up my needles again, I couldn’t face anything but the simplest, most mindless type of knitting.  I just didn’t have anything more in me at the time.  And so this sat…and sat.  Other priorities came and went, but as his birthday approached this year, I knew it was time to do something.  I seriously considered ripping back and starting over, possibly with a simple, quick and easy, already written vest pattern.  But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.  Of course the sizing and the amount of yarn were really a year off.  I was able to add length, but not width, which made it a little awkward.  I did in fact, run out of yarn and had to finish the edging with a different color.  And then in my fervor to really show off the stitch definition I over blocked it, especially at the neckline.  Looking back, there are several things I would have done differently.  But it was completed in time for his birthday this year.  That first picture was taken as it lay blocking in the middle of the night before.  Maybe not as nice as it could be, but at least I kept my promise, made when no sweater appeared on his birthday table last year, and he seems content.