frog prince

Carrie said in the comments, "You do have stamina, though, for all the reknitting!"

While it's true that it does take a certain constitutional fortitude to significantly frog a project multiple times, in this case I think it's really more that I can't accept that a sweater that has taken three years to knit should look like ass less than perfect at the end of it all. Much better to take more time to rip back and reknit. I've always sort of known, really, that the design of the sleeves was wrong for a close-fitting sweater when I downsized the pattern, which was why I had such a hard time starting the sleeves in the first place. I knew it was wrong, but I didn't really know what I had to do to fix it. If you really know what you're doing you can plan up front, but if you don't then you have to do it my way, which is really to mostly follow the pattern instructions hoping you've fixed it enough, work out from the result what more needs to change, then change the plan more radically based on this new info and rip back and follow the new plan. Even now, I'm following the new plan but I'm still not totally sure what the result will look like when the sleeve is sewn to the body. I do know that I'm going to have to rip back again for sure, because now the sleeves will be too short because I didn't go for long enough before starting the shaping I decided needed to be added to the tops of the sleeves. I'm continuing to knit, even knowing I'll have to rip, because I want to verify that my redesign theory worked, and I just don't have any other way to do that, since my knowledge of design and construction theory is clearly shaky at best.

Hopefully I'll learn a lot from this experience, and next time I won't have to play this game so many times in a single project...

Stephanie helped a lot with the mindset when she said, "So you have to rip back... so what? What does it really mean? It means you have to do more knitting... and you like knitting!" It helped me to relax, and see this more as a learning experience then an exercise in failure. It's frustrating at times, but I'll be happier in the end to have the sweater I want rather than the sweater I'm settling for.

Maybe too, all this will help JP to understand why I never did finish his damn sweater... I was road-blocked by indecision regarding what to do about the sleeves, and I really did think I had much more time to finish!