Knitterly angst

I finally tried on Wicked. It’s a good thing I had decided not to knit further on it until I tried it on.

Before I began the sweater, I knit a couple of swatches until I got gauge. Unfortunately, the pattern requires that the gauge swatch be knitted with a smaller needle, so I couldn’t monitor my gauge very easily on the main sweater, which uses the larger needle. (Well, actually, if I had checked my stitches, I could have seen that my wrists had gotten a mind of their own.)

Somehow my knitting, which is loose to begin with, was very r-e-l-a-x-e-d on this sweater. It probably has something to do with tennis elbow and my body saying, “She’ll never notice if we just loosen up that stitch tension a tad.”

Well, I noticed all right. The sweater was huge. I ripped back to the armholes and then put in four darts and knit a few inches. Even that wasn’t enough to take up all the extra fabric.

So last night I ripped the sweater back all the way to the neckband, which seems to be the only part that fits. And I’m not sure what to do now, not sure I want to do anything right now.

I ripped out much more of Sahara and got right back into it. But Wicked was a tougher rip because of the gauge issue at the root of the problem. (I had to rip Sahara back simply because I was knitting the wrong size.) I wonder if I should continue making sweaters with my forearm problems, or if I should just stick to less fitted projects.

But not being able to dream about sweaters and knit them up would be very sad indeed. And the fact that Wicked is a comparatively simple knit doesn’t help. I should have been able to turn this project out with no problem.

  So does this rip become a R.I.P.?