On Ripping

I'm no stranger to starting projects without knowing how they are going to end. Some of my favorite knitting pieces have started with the phrase, "I wonder what would happen if...", and so far, nothing terrible has happened. Even if it does, even if the finished object is ugly or otherwise unwearable, it's just string. It can be ripped out and made into something else. It's true, there is time "lost" since there's nothing to show, but I don't know if lost is the right word there. I mean, can't it just be about the experience knitting? Can't it just be that I spent time relaxing, and so what if the thing I produce is ugly or doesn't fit, or in one case, could not possibly fit ANYONE, ever?

I'd love to be at that place, where I'm so relaxed about ripping out that it doesn't bother me at all, but in truth, I find it a little irritating, in part because the rest of my life is so hectic that I'd like to know that the time I spend knitting is also spent producing something nice.

Last week, I posted a picture of my new yarn, which I'm making into the Green Gable sweater by Zephyrstyle. The pattern is really nicely written, except for one thing: it doesn't tell you the finished size of the garment. By their measurements, I'm on the small side of the XL range, so I started there. A little poking around on the internet revealed that most people were making at least a size smaller than where they fit according to the size ranges. And because it's got a wide neckline and is made from the top down, it's really impossible to know what the final chest measurement is. Am I frustrated by this? Plenty. Is there anything I can do? Nope.



So, I have made the decision to continue making the largest size for about 5 more inches, at which point I should be able to try it on and see. And it's pretty likely that I'm going to have to rip it all out. I talked to the folks at knit night last night, and they generally agreed that this was my only option. I have no idea about how it will fit, so while I could rip it out now and go with the internet and make the smaller size, that might not fit either, in which case I'd be ripping that out and making the XL again.



It feels a lot like graduate school, where I'd be working and working towards proving something that might not even be true. So I'd work for a while hoping it was true (and my advisor would call things "morally true", which didn't help matters at all, since morals and mathematics are not the same thing), and then if I got nowhere, I'd look for a way to show it wasn't true.

People tell me that math and knitting are the same because isn't knitting all about numbers and counting and measuring. I think it might be more than that. A lot more. I only wish I had started knitting the same time I started mathematics.