When at First You Don't Succeed

 

Put it down.

No, I’m serious, put the stupid thing down and walk away for a little while. Watch TV, take a nap, work on another project, anything. Come back to it once you’re able to look at it with fresh eyes, or else you’ll probably find yourself repeating the same dumb mistakes over and over in a frustrating loop. I speak from experience.

Take my latest knitting project for example, the honeycomb-inspired tank top. It’s my first time making something so large without a pattern, and I’ve been carefully working up the back half of the shirt. I felt like I was making good progress, even as I reached the honeycomb section at the top. Things were going well! And then I stepped back and looked at the thing I made and I Did Not Like It.

Now, you’re entitled to your own opinion of that stitch pattern but it doesn’t look at all like I wanted it to. I thought it would from the swatch but no! The honeycombs are way too small and aren’t very well defined in this fuzzy yarn, and so it just sort of looks like a mess. I worked up a couple more rows to see if it would grow on me but no luck. Either I would have to live with something I didn’t much like the look of (a terrible prospect when you’ve poured hours of time into making a garment from scratch), or I’d have to rip back 30+ rows, figure out a better honeycomb stitch, and start over.

I put it down and walked away. I did some baking.

I came back and ripped the rows out.

I walked away again and worked on colorwork mittens.

I figured out a new stitch pattern with bigger, clearer honeycombs.

I walked away again and daydreamed about living room décor.

And finally, my frustration spent, I was ready to return to this project in full force. Redoing those 30 rows didn’t take as long as had imagined it would when I was ripping them out the first time. And I really do think that the new honeycomb stitch is an improvement.

That said, if I get 30 rows into this pattern and start to hate it, I won’t hesitate to rip it out too. (Okay, I’ll hesitate a little, but I'll do it). I’ll probably need some more time to vent my frustration. I might curse and complain. I might throw the darn thing across the room and leave it in a heap for a week. But that’s okay.

If at first you don’t succeed, you don’t have to try again immediately. But don’t give up either.

Until next time, stay crafty my friends.  

Sweet as Honey

 Now that I’ve got my big, all-consuming project out of the way, it’s time to focus on some of the smaller things I’ve been meaning to get around to. I’ve already spent a good month or so getting through some of the half-finished knitting and crochet pieces lying around, and now I’m ready for something new.

One of my goals this year is to end with less yarn than I started with. I was going to resolve not to buy any more yarn but… come on, I need to be a little realistic! I rummaged around my stash for inspiration and came upon most of a cone of yellow alpaca silk lace, leftover from my big special occasion shawl. I wasn’t really feeling another lace-weight project, but held double it acted like a fingering. After weighing it and doing some math, I figured I’d have just about enough for a sleeveless top. Perfect! Now to find a pattern.

The color reminds me so much of honey, so I knew I wanted a honeycomb-inspired design. I went searching for just that… and it came up blank. There are certainly patterns with a honeycomb texture, but they’re all sleeved sweater and baby clothes, not the tank top I wanted. I briefly debated trying to reconfigure one of the existing patterns, but it became obvious that it would be a lot of work. Like, I-might-as-well-just-make-my-own-pattern amount of work.

Wait.

Wait.

That’s exactly what I should do!

A sleeveless top is basically a cylinder with some holes in it, right? A tube plus shoulder straps. I could do that. I made a sketch.

(Should I apologize for the creepy mannequin face? I didn’t feel like drawing actual features.)

Yeah, something like that would work. It did need a bit of math to get the dimensions right, though. I got out my tape measure and measured some key points on my torso, including both circumferences and the vertical length between each (nothing worse than becoming the unwilling owner of a crop-top!). I added a few inches to each circumference to get a slightly relaxed fit, and so I could fudge the hip and bust measurements to equal each other (it just makes the math easier).

To go from inches to stitches and rows, I needed a gauge swatch. I was really, really careful with the gauge swatch on this one. I measured down to an eighth of an inch. And then I measured again in centimeters. I didn’t get a second ruler out, but maybe I should have, for reproducibility’s sake?

Where was I? Oh yeah, math. Big thanks to my high school chemistry teacher for making me do a million unit conversion problems. I don’t think you intended me to use it for knitting, but I’m not exactly converting grams to moles in my day-to-day work either, so. I’m repurposing this skill.

After a bit of though and consultation with knitting friends, I decided to make this top in two pieces: front and back. I could knit in the round, but honestly my circular needles aren’t the best quality, and adding seams would strengthen the garment overall. The only downside is that I won’t be able to try it on for fit until it’s nearly done. Here’s hoping my math holds!

With all those logistics out of the way, I’m just now starting to cast on. Most of the body is plain stockinette and pretty boring (why do I keep doing this to myself?), so I’ll check in with you all once I get to the interesting textured bits at the top. Until then, stay crafty!