The Long Race

A journey is a gesture inscribed in space, it vanishes even as it’s made. You go from one place to another place, and on to somewhere else again, and already behind you there is no trace that you were ever there.― Damon Galgut

The thing about running long races is that you can't quite believe you're finished when you cross the finish line. You feel like you should be rationing your reserves, watching your breathing, checking in with how your feet are feeling... even when you are collapsed on the grass and not really sure how you're going to get up again, your brain is still getting ready for the next training day.

I feel like that with this sweater: I'm done, but am I done? Shouldn't I be knitting more? Sewing more ends in? Surely after all that, it can't possibly be complete. Could it?

I spent the last week joining the sleeve and working the neckline and finishing touches. It felt long and frustrating because I kept finding errors and having to let down stitches to re-do them, and I kept finding that my stitch counts continued to be inexplicably uneven for each section. I definitely fudged the heck out of the last few rows. That's also what you do at the end of a race: you throw all your technique out the window and just claw your way to the finish line, whatever it takes:

I cast off the final stitches on Wednesday evening and sewed in all the ends before tossing it onto a chair and going to bed. The next day, I put it in the washing machine and gave it a gentle wash with a bit of soap on the delicate cycle. This is not something I normally do with a newly finished garment, but as this was indigo-dyed cotton, I felt it necessary to wash any excess dye out of it, in the same way you would a pair of new blue jeans (which is also indigo-dyed cotton). I'm really glad I did, because I took it out to squeeze out a bit of the excess water before I put it to spin, and the water that came out was still surprisingly blue. Perhaps some of the colour washed out of it, but not so much as to change the overall look of the garment:

It's been unseasonably warm here on Vancouver Island, so it was warm enough for me to put it outside to dry in the sun. The only thing about that is that, in the same way blue jeans shrink a bit after a wash, so did this sweater:

But luckily, in the same way blue jeans do, once I put it on and wore it for a while, it stretched back out to the required dimensions. Thank goodness for that. After all that fuss about the inaccurate sizing in the pattern, it would have been infuriating to end up with a sweater that was too small:

I'm particularly pleased with how the sleeves turned out. I changed the increases to be more evenly placed along the length to give me a more tapered sleeve rather than the puffy sleeve in the original schematic:

And after trying to decipher the instructions for separating for the neckline for an hour, I gave up and just winged it. It turned out pretty nice, I think:

So yeah, that's it. Job done. Finito and complete... right? Right?

I did pick up a crochet hook to start a little project out of the most Scheepjes Bookazine, but to be honest, I've only worked a little bit on it because I felt like I needed a break after such a long project. It's not that I don't have a lot of other projects on the brain, but I just wanted a couple of evenings of sitting with idle hands for a change. That won't last for long, because I am loving the colour and texture of the waistcoast stitch in my current project:

And I also have a sewing project in mind. And I want to finish the project on my loom. And I have an idea for a crochet/sewing project for a sweatshirt makeover...

So much for idle hands. It's probably for the best. I'd best get started. Have a good week!