Stubbornness and Kitchener Stitch
You don’t always need to do things the hard way
I’ve been knitting long enough to have learned that mistakes are best addressed immediately or never at all. I’m not a perfectionist knitter but I’ve learned to ask myself if a flaw in my project will bother me enough that I will wear the finished object less. If the answer is yes, I’ll take the time to rip back, drop down cable columns or even start over. If the answer is no, I’ll blithely continue forward and do my best to forget that I ever noticed the issue.
Instagram, though, has given me an unhealthy hubris in my ability to rip apart a sweater a put it back together as if nothing has happened. The hashtag #sweatersurgery has over 500 posts and features videos of knitters slicing their projects in the middle of the garment, knitting a few more rounds and stitching it back together with perfectly tensioned Kitchener stitch.
Magic! Never again hide your too-short sweaters in a drawer of shame! You can have the perfect length garment just by working up the courage to take scissors to a stitch that (you hope) is the beginning of round. It may take you multiple hours of tedious hand stitching to close the hole, but that surely must be less work than reknitting half a sweater.
The first time I tried this technique, I used it to avoid knitting several more inches of twisted rib in the Ranunculus above. It felt like a super power and I started thinking about past projects that I could slice and dice to my heart’s desire.
Then I made a mistake on my Ingrid Sweater.
I realized halfway through the mock cable section on the body that I had knit the 2x2 ribbing half as long as was called for. The armscye was going to be way too small to achieve the slouchy drop shoulder I wanted. Was I going to rip back all of that work? What do you think? I looked up a tutorial for Kitchener stitch in 2x2 rib, watched it once and reached for my scissors.
Reader, this was an act of unprecedented overconfidence. Looking back on the days that I spent sewing this sweater back together I wonder what I was thinking. I felt so discouraged by the process and its lackluster results that I put the project down for weeks. You can see a clear line right across my bust where I spent hours painstakingly reattaching the pieces.
Now that it’s off my needles, I wear this sweater all the time and am proud of finishing it. I’m not sure if it would be done today if I hadn’t attempted sweater surgery, but it was a bitch getting it done. I learned my limitations as a knitter and I wear them blazoned across my chest.
Who am I kidding, though? I’m definitely going to attempt crazy, dumb alterations like this again. I love to push my limitations. Next time, maybe I’ll take one more moment of reflection before reaching for the snips.
That’s what we call a “feature” lol
Loved this blog btw!! You are still my hero