Apologies for not posting for two weeks now! I do have a good reason though. I have continued to follow my diet and exercise routine, which, though effective, is completely exhausting. I have lost several pounds, but I won’t lie – it took being tired and hungry constantly for two weeks to do it. I’m starting to feel better and not struggle so much to make it through my workouts.
But there is more news. I finished The Never-Ending Sweater aka Seed and Stockinette Cardigan on Ravelry. It took staying up until 3 am plus some finishing work to do it, but I made it to the finish!
Crossing the finish line is extremely important with knitting. Or any big project for that matter. Not finishing something after putting exhorbitant amounts of time into it is like putting in all the time to train for a marathon and then not running it! And, as with completing a marathon, let me just tell anyone out there who needs the extra push that it will be so totally worth it! Sometimes the universe will reward you with more than just a finished piece. Not sure why the universe chose to reward me, but I finished my sweater on the very day that Burbank got snow for the first time in 50+ years. I don’t know how many years it’s been exactly, but given that one of our friends who is in his 60’s now has not seen snow in Burbank since he was a toddler, this is quite the historic event.
Back to the sweater, this is a major accomplishment for me not only because I finished, but because this sweater represents all the growth I had while knitting it, right up to the end. My friend designed it, and she walked me through it. I had to learn proper purl technique, measuring, gauge, the value of using stitchmarkers, and how to fix a neckline that doesn’t fit quite right. Now that I have completed it, I feel ready to take on just about any project, and I can honestly say that I’m a different knitter now than I was when I started. Something I would like to share is the finishing technique for tightening up a neckline that doesn’t fit: just use an appropriate-sized crochet hook, and slip stitch a stitch, skip over one or two stitches, slip stitch the next stitch, and so on, all around the neckline. I know it doesn’t sound like it would do anything, but it WILL tighten the whole thing up.
And now, I must get back to knitting. Crossing the finish line feels so incredible I need to do it with some more projects. It probably won’t snow when I finish the next one though.
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