Inch by Inch, Putting it Together

It’s come to this – a whole blog post about switching to a longer circular needle, and how that has changed my life.

I’ve been slowly slogging away on the sweater. 288 stitches of stockinette – a lot of knitting and purling, and every once in a while fixing that weird thing that I described a few posts back. It’s still happening, but I’m catching it more. I’m on my sixth ball of yarn – for the main part of the body, I’m averaging about 3 inches of length with each 50-gram ball.

This afternoon, I thought I’d take some picture and post about my progress. To prepare, I thought I’d put this temporarily on a long Size 1 or Size 2 needle so I could spread it out a bit. It just looks way to bunched up on the 24-inch Size 3 I’ve been working, and frankly, it’s been kind of hard to work with. I dug around in my knitting bag and what to my wandering eyes should appear but a Size 3 needle – with a 47-inch cable. How much easier my knitting on this sweater will now be!

But the thing is, I knew I had this needle. Once again, my brain outfoxed me – on two fronts. Part of my brain thought the fabric should be bigger than the needle – if you’re knitting in the round. That part of my brain didn’t remember that I wasn’t knitting this in the round. Then another part of my brain remembered that I’d had to borrow a longer Size 3 needle to work on the Vaila Slipover, but that part forgot that I’d needed a size in between the 24” and 47” inch versions I had. Now all these parts of my brain are reconciled and working together – right when I was about to do a lot of binding off and separating to create the armholes on the sweater.

Thanks, brain.Sometimes, I wonder what my brain would look like if I knitted during an MRI. But then I remember that I’d have to use non-metal circular needles, and it hardly seems worth it.