the Akamai Knitter

Last night I finished reading the Yarn Harlot’s Knitting Rules! and the chapter on sweaters got me to thinking on why I don’t knit sweaters.

1. I live in Hawai’i. Obviously I don’t wear sweaters too often here in Hawai’i. This doesn’t seem to be a good enough reason. I don’t wear socks that often either, yet I have been fiendishly knitting socks. I even find occassion to wear them when previously I could go without. So yes, I live in a tropical climate, but I’m sure I could find a way to wear sweaters if I really wanted to.
2. I hate knitting with cotton. Once in awhile I’ll knit up a dishcloth and have a great time doing it, but usually I’ll get sick of cotton yarn by the time I’m binding off the dischcloth. I can’t imagine how I’d feel knitting a 42″ sweater out of cotton. Sure, there are better cottons out there. Earlier this year I knitted up a shrug in Brown Sheep’s Cotton Fleece and even though I love the finished product I wasn’t happy with the process. Plus, knitting with cotton hurts my hands. It doesn’t matter that I knit with bamboo or with wood, it hurts.
3. I hate measuring myself. This is probably one of the top reasons as to why I dislike knitting sweaters. The Yarn Harlot says that in order to knit a successful sweater you have to be completely honest with yourself about your body and I recently gained a bunch of weight that I haven’t been able to get off. Knitting a sweater would be like committing myself to the weight I’m at and I’m not ready to do that. So in my mind, knitting a sweater that would fit me now would be like committing myself to staying at this weight.
   
4. I’m afraid of the ugly sweater. When I was 12 years old I knit a sweater for my mother. I had no idea what gauge was. I had no concept of what would happen if you substituted one yarn for another or what measurements were for garments. I lovingly knitted this shell top for my mother and when I was done she couldn’t get it over her shoulders. I will never forget the pain of that moment and even though I’m older and wiser, I still seem to have some residual trauma because of it.
5. Sweaters bore me. Since it has been establised that I don’t knit sweaters for myself, the only other person I would knit a sweater for is my mother. Her taste in sweaters runs toward the very boring. I’ve been trying to knit a simple tank top for her with one yarn or another for the past 10 years. I always get bored after about 6 inches and I end up putting it aside in favor of more interesting projects. The combination of sweater terror and sweater boredom makes the knitting of the tank top a rather interesting experience.

So there you have all the reasons I’ve had for avoiding the sweater. I can’t do much about reasons 1-3, but I can definitely do something about reasons 4 and 5. I can take my current boring mom tank with me to an Aloha Knitters meet and spend a couple of hours a week on it there. So my intentions will be out there for everyone to see. I want to finish a tank top for my mother to overcome this silly fear of the sweater.