monkeymom's Diaryland Diary
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Why Rich doesn't want me to knit for him.
I'm tired and I didn't go to Curves today, but Kim and I did some power shopping when I picked her up from school, so that's exersize, isn't it?
This has come up a couple of times in conversations recently, so here is the story of why Rich does not want me to knit a sweater for him. It all starts way back when we first got married...
I knitted a white cabled tennis sweater with a deep v-neck, trimmed with a couple of rows of navy and dark red. It was simple, classic, and I don't know what I was thinking, since he certainly did not play tennis, and it was winter when I made it.
I am pretty much a self-taught knitter, with an occasional phone call to my mother for help if I couldn't figure out directions in a pattern. There were times when I thought I understood the directions, did them the way I thought they should go, and realized later that it was wrong, and then I would either fix it or ignore it. I was ignorant of the importance of gauge, too, and that made for some very interesting results. I knitted for years before I realized that gauge was important - I mean, I only figured that out a couple of years ago!
So I made the sweater, sewed the pieces together (another thing I didn't know how to do properly, so by the time I finished anything, I felt like it was a rag and would practically throw it at the intended recipient, "Here, it's crap, wear it.") and then, following the directions, I picked up the stitches around the neck, ready to begin knitting the v-neck.
The instructions told me how many stitches to pick up, but as I picked up stitches, I was finding that I needed more stitches than called for to get to the end of the neck. I thought it wouldn't matter, and that those numbers were probably just a suggestion, so I picked up as many as I needed. I didn't realize that you have to spread out the picked-up stitches evenly and only pick up as many as the pattern tells you! So when I finished knitting the inch or two of ribbing, my v-neckline gapped open unattractively, and I knew it was wrong, but Rich thought it was fine, so he wore it to work that night. I never let him wear it again, even after I reknit the neckline, because I still couldn't get it right (and didn't know why!). He liked that sweater, but I took it away and pulled it out and eventually used the yarn for something else.
A year or two later, I wanted to knit something again, and I went to the yarn store that used to be at Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, and bought some gray yarn to make an Aran cardigan for Rich. I finished that one, sewed it together ("It's a rag, here, wear it!") but it didn't fit. He has broad shoulders, but a very narrow waist and hips, so his sweaters always gap outward at the back waist and I hated the way it looked. He protested, but I don't think I let him wear it more than once before I took it away.
The next sweater was one that I started and then put away for a while (like a couple of years) and when I wanted to finish it, I ran out of yarn before the end of the second sleeve. I didn't know about dye lots, okay? So I went to Kmart, found a color that looked like it, and knitted the last inch or two of the sleeve with it. I let him wear that sweater, even though I could see that the off-white yarn didn't match at the top of the sleeve, but he claimed that no one noticed, and he wore it quite a bit until the Red Heart yarn started to pill so much that it bothered me, and finally I took it away from him and, I think, threw it away.
Are you seeing a pattern here?
The next sweater that I made for him was about 10 years ago, when we first moved here. I bought the yarn for him at Verna's Yarn Shop, and it was a great-looking sweater. It didn't fit properly at the waist, because he's hard to fit there, but I let him wear it for a long time, until, again, the yarn looked too pill-y. When I took that one away, he was mad about it, and told me he didn't want me to make any more sweaters for him, because I never let him wear them.
There was one more thing I knitted for him after that, a vest from a pattern in Knitter's magazine, but since I substituted the yarn called for, and still didn't quite understand why gauge mattered, it was too big and he never wore it. I eventually gave it to his father, but his dad told me later that it had been too big and he gave it to the Salvation Army! Uh huh! I was horrified, and told him to just give it back next time so I could make something else with the yarn! (I don't knit for his parents anymore; they don't appreciate anything I make.)
So you see, everything I make for Rich has bad karma attached. Oh, wait, there is one thing that was a success --
I had almost forgotten this one! It's been about 5 years since I was re-reading Knitting Without Tears by Elizabeth Zimmerman, and was inspired by that book, along with some wonderful wool I had recently aquired from Mary, who had a spinning wheel shop in a small town near us. That wool was so wonderful! It was the first real wool I'd had, and it smelled like wool, and felt so good in my hands, and I just wanted to make the perfect thing with it.
So, following the instructions in Knitting Without Tears, and with my new understanding of gauge, I knitted a dark brown wool sweater, with fair isle designs in light brown and cream wools. I was so proud of that sweater! It turned out to be just wonderful, and the instructions were so simple and without a lot of detail, so I felt like I was quite an accomplished knitter to have made that sweater!
Rich wore it and he did like it, but so did Rachel, and she wore it a lot, and eventually took it to college with her! She still has it, and loves it, so Rich didn't get that sweater, either. I have pictures of two of Rachel's old boyfriends wearing that sweater, too!
Actually, now that I think about it, I still have some of that brown yarn, and I could make another one...
11:57 p.m. - 2003-12-16
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