I recently watched two different video podcasts featuring amazingly talented women talking about how they didn’t want to knit sweaters for themselves because of their weight. As if being overweight makes you less worthy of knitting a sweater for yourself. I felt sad for them, but I totally understood where they were coming from because I’ve been in that same boat. I felt the same way about sweater knitting for myself.

When it comes to knitting, as an overweight woman I’ve found comfort in shawls, cowls, scarves and hats.  They always fit. Maybe I opt to knit a larger size, but I almost never have to take body measurements to ensure exact fit.  I feel the same way about shoes and makeup. I could weigh 100 pounds or 500 pounds and shoes and makeup will always fit. Don’t ask to see my lip gloss collection—it’s borderline embarrassing.

I used to love knitting sweaters … about 60+ pounds ago. That was before Joji Locatelli and other designers were making boxy sweaters. It was a time when a more tailored, fitted sweater was in vogue. Back then, I was proud to show off my hourglass curves, but now I’m more inclined to hide my Rubenesque frame.

When an opportunity to test knit a sweater for Andrea Mowry came up, I threw my hat into the ring to be one of her testers … because ANDREA MOWRY! Nearly 100 people responded to her test call. I offered up some yarn options and requested a size 2X (a size I rolled into about a year ago). I was hesitant to knit a sweater when I saw her test call because I didn’t think that at my size I deserved a handknit sweater. I don’t know why. Sounds stupid, right? I didn’t feel worthy. Like my weight was shame I had to wear and I couldn’t put a sweater on top of it.

She picked me (and, of course others for the various sizes)! I started out with the mentality that I was doing this as a test to help her out so she could launch the pattern with confidence that this would fit someone my size. But, as the sweater started coming to life, I slowly came around to the idea that I was doing this more for myself to get me over this hump. I had to stop fooling myself into thinking, “I can’t knit a sweater for myself at THIS weight when I just know I’m gonna lose all kinds of weight someday.” Oh brother! The truth is, I AM this weight right now, and I deserve a sweater dammit!

I can’t share photos of the sweater with you while we’re still in test mode, but believe me, when Andrea launches it, you won’t be disappointed.

Epilogue

If I was looking to pin the weight gain on something, I guess I could blame it on a number of things both bad and good that have happened over the last five years … a turbulent short marriage that ended in divorce, two miscarriages, the loss of three grandparents and two uncles, nearly losing my parents in a motorcycle accident, the start of a new relationship with a former flame, a terrible former boss, a new role at work, the irresistible selections of cheese … all kinds of stuff. Our past may shape who we are today, but we shouldn’t limit ourselves by believing we cannot be more in the future than what we have been in the past. So I say, “Knit that sweater!”

I love starting new projects—poring over new ideas, selecting the yarn, deciding which needle will work best with the fiber, and winding the yarn into balls. I love casting on three stitches and watching it grow to 300. I love creating the textile. But all that love comes to a screeching halt once the last stitch is bound off.

My least favorite part about knitting is having to weave in the ends when the project is finished. Ugh. I have literally set aside finished projects for more than a year to avoid weaving in multiple ends. It’s not so bad when it’s a simple one-color project and I’m able to spit-splice wool ends, leaving me with only a couple of ends to weave in. But it’s those beautiful colorwork and gradient projects that give me end-weaving anxiety.

I recently finished Melanie Berg’s True Colors and I’m in love with the colors and how the gradient is working, but it’s been done for over a week now and I think I’ve woven in seven ends (and I probably have 50+ more ends to go). I’ve set it aside and already started working on a new project, in addition to an MKAL I’m doing. I won’t lie, I’m in end-weaving denial. I’m secretly hoping magical end-weaving elves come to my house one snowy night and surprise me in the morning with a completed shawl. That’s not too much to ask, right?

For the True Colors project, I did learn a new (to me) technique for carrying the yarn up the side. This technique locks in the yarn behind the first stitch on the right-side rows and completely hides it from the front. After doing this for a few inches, I felt like “where has this been all my knitting life?!”

Want to learn? Lee Meredith at leethalknits.com created a written tutorial for continental and English knitters to carry the yarn up the side and lock it in. The tutorial is just images and text, so if you’re a video learner, it might take a bit to grasp the instruction (or maybe that was just me). Once I got the hang of it, it was super easy to do and produced a great result. I’ve definitely added this technique to my bag of tricks for future projects.

You might be saying to yourself “OMG, weaving in ends is the easiest part of the project!” And you would be correct. However, for me, it’s also the most tedious. Also, I’m a bit of a rule breaker when it comes to weaving in the ends because … wait for it … I put knots in my knitting.

I’ve watched videos, read books and attended in-person and virtual classes on finishing projects. Every single time, it gets drilled into our heads to avoid putting knots in the knitting. I can’t help it if a knot makes me feel more secure. I weave it up and down a few times, I create as flat a knot as I can, I clip the yarn, split the ply and rough it up a bit. I’ve tried not doing the knot, but when I stretch the yarn during blocking, the end pops out and is a total pain to weave in again. Sometimes a knitter’s got to knot.

I’ve set an end-weaving goal for myself. I WILL have True Colors completely finished (ends woven and blocked) by March 9, which is when Vogue Knitting Live comes back to Chicago. I only wish Melanie Berg was coming to Chicago’s event like she did recently for New York’s event. I’m pretty sure I would have totally geeked out in front of her with my True Colors shawl. I did that with Vickie Howell and Debbie Stoller at an event. But that’s an embarrassing story for another day.

Epilogue
I wasn’t kidding when I said it took me more than a year to weave in ends for previous projects. It’s my mental block. I can’t help it. I finished knitting On the Spice Market on November 23, 2016 and finally wove in the ends on September 9, 2017. I finished knitting Metamorphosis Shawl on December 19, 2013 and finally wove in the ends on September 11, 2017 (yeah, almost four years later). I finished knitting Sugarloaf on February 25, 2016 and wove in the ends on September 14, 2017. Clearly something productive was happening last September!

I’ve been alternating through knitting projects recently—three to be exact. I set True Colors aside to work on Alpenglow because it was a fairly simple, single-color project, which was perfect for a flight I was taking to Las Vegas. I love True Colors, but taking 11 different colored skeins of yarn on a plane just wasn’t ideal.

The True Colors pattern calls for an SSK (slip-slip-knit decrease) throughout the knitting. Melanie Berg instructs you to “slip 2 sts one at a time knit-wise to the right needle; return sts to left needle in turned position and knit them together through the back loops.” Easy enough and it effectively and attractively decreases one stitch.

The Alpenglow pattern also calls for an SSK throughout the knitting, but Plucky Knitter instructs it as “slip 1 st knit-wise, k1, pass slipped st over.” Also an effective way to decrease a stitch, but it shows a bit more. It’s not quite as hidden as Melanie Berg’s version of the SSK.

Unfortunately, I ran out of yarn as I was nearing completion of the Alpenglow pattern and had to put it on hold until I could get another skein. So, I went back to knitting True Colors and using that method of SSK. Once the yarn came in, I dropped True Colors and completed Alpenglow. I had to keep reminding myself which SSK to do for which one (my remembery is not so good anymore).

Once I finished up Alpenglow, I went back to True Colors and then picked up an MKAL (mystery knit-a-long) project from Wild Prairie Knits that calls for a slightly different SSK for future clues. This time, the pattern instructs you to “Sl 1 knit-wise, sl 1 purl-wise, k those 2 sts together off the right needle.” This method is fairly similar to Melanie Berg’s SSK, and actually looks a bit better. The stitches on both sides lie flatter and the stitches around the SSK look nicer. Must be something with slipping that second stitch purl-wise. I think it really does make a difference.

Curious to see what they all look like side by side? Here’s a swatch of the three types of SSK (please ignore the YOs). Melanie Berg’s is #1 (right side), Plucky Knitter’s is #2 (middle) and Wild Prairie’s is #3 (left side). I personally prefer the look of #3, but #1 is a close second. They all look pretty similar until you start to look at the stitches around them. In the end, each method gets you the same result, so it’s really up to you which way you want to SSK.

Epilogue
I don’t usually work on three things at a time. I’ve had a bit of knitting fever lately, wishing I had three more sets of hands to work on really great patterns out there. As True Colors progresses, it really has become one of my favorite projects to work on because of the evolution of the gradient colors I selected. I’m excited to share it with you soon!

When I began knitting nearly 15 years ago, I was living in a small apartment, and I only bought yarn for specific projects. I knit the project, threw away the scraps, and bought new yarn for the next project. Yarn storage wasn’t exactly a problem, as I didn’t have much stash to speak of. I also had recently gotten laid off from my job, so I didn’t have much cash to speak of either.

I started out with less expensive acrylic and wool yarns purchased from chain craft stores. After I found a new job and moved into a townhouse, I began to venture out to the few local knitting shops there were at the time to snap up more yarn. I’ll admit to initially being intimidated when going into some of these shops. I felt a little judged in some places and completely embraced in others. Participating in local knit crawls helped me learn which shops were right for me.

Then, I was introduced to knitting conventions, and that exposed me to a whole new world of yarn from shops and dyers around the country. I still remember saying to myself years ago when Plucky Knitter came to Stitches Midwest, “Who’s Plucky Knitter and why are people going so crazy for this expensive yarn? Who would pay that much?!” Now, it’s one of the few yarns I buy exclusively. I even made a trip out from Chicago to San Francisco to attend Stitches West just so I could go to the Plucky booth. Crazy, I know.

I won’t even get into online yarn purchases, which I believe is responsible for 90% of the yarn I have today. Oh, the Internet.

Then came the yarn subscriptions! When small companies like PostStitch and Kitterly started to package up yarn with needles and a pattern, I was totally sold. You mean to tell me that instead of buying random yarn for a someday project, someone will think through a pattern and the yarn for me and send it to me in one neat package? Say what?! Genius!

It wasn’t until I moved this past Summer into a bigger house that I realized just how much yarn I had accumulated over the years. To be honest, I was a little embarrassed by it. Friends who helped me move called me a yarn hoarder … in a joking way, I think. I hope they were joking. Oh well. I had an entire bedroom closet filled with bins of yarn and even more bins stacked inside that bedroom. I have no doubt that other knitters have a far greater stash than I do, but I’m not the type of person to collect things or hold onto things for very long. There’s not a whole lot I have an attachment to when it comes to stuff. Things are simply things. Yarn, somehow, seems to be the exception.

So, one afternoon, I sat down with all my bins in front of me and decided that it was time to part with some of my yarny goodness. I tried selling it online at a discount, but it wasn’t selling fast enough to even make a dent. One person suggested lowering the price more. As it was, since I was covering the shipping cost, most times I was lucky just to break even and sometimes ended up upside-down. Paying $4 to send someone a $3 skein of yarn isn’t exactly ideal.

So, what to do with all this yarn? I considered donating it to a local charity. And maybe that’s what I’ll end up doing. I know there’s lots of great groups out there. I even thought about teaching my mom how to knit so that she could use up the yarn.  I’ll figure it out. In the meantime, I have enough stash to last my lifetime and beyond.

Epilogue
I wish yarn was the only knitting-related problem I have. I recently sold about 20 sets of circular needles (remember those knit kit subscriptions I mentioned?), and I spent two weekends going through stacks of knitting magazines while binge watching PBS shows. I flipped through every single magazine (oh, and there were lots) and cut out only the patterns I wanted. I recycled the rest. I can’t bring myself to part with my nearly 200 knitting books though. Every girl has her limits.

When I turned 40 a couple of years ago, I put myself on a five-year plan. I planned to sell my townhouse and move into a house with a bigger yard for my dogs. Having been recently divorced, I wanted to find myself in a loving, healthy relationship again. And I wanted to travel more and enjoy life in my forties, more than I did in my twenties and thirties, which weren’t always so great. I’d throw in weight loss too, but hey, one thing at a time. Let’s not get too crazy.

The year of my fortieth birthday is when travel really took off (pun intended) for me. I hit Boston for a long weekend and was snowed in by a blizzard. I took a girls trip to Tucson for a much-needed spa retreat. My aunt took me to Italy for two weeks (yeah, she’s pretty great). I visited New Orleans, Nashville, Puerto Vallarta, made a trip down to Texas to visit family, and ended my year with a trip to San Diego. The following year was filled with more trips to great destinations, as was this year.

Knitting came with me on each and every one of those trips, and I’m pretty particular about what I choose to bring along. For me, airplane knitting needs to be simple and relatively mindless because I will inevitably get interrupted mid row by an interested neighbor or flight attendant, and that’s totally fine. It also needs to be a single-color project, so I’m not rolling balls of different colored yarn under my seat or down the aisle (which has happened).

Over the years, particularly since the 9/11 attack, I’ve seen questions come up in Ravelry posts about whether or not it’s okay to bring needles on a plane. If you’re still uncertain … the answer is “yes, you can.” TSA even has it posted on their website. Now, I’m not saying you might not get a difficult TSA agent or a flight attendant who isn’t aware of (or doesn’t care about) the policy. In the end, it is at their discretion. I’ve just been fortunate enough in all my domestic and international air travel over the last 20 years (knock on wood because I’m boarding a plane again this week) to not have my needles confiscated.

So, how do I do it? Well, I travel with a project already in progress on my circular stainless steel needles, along with extra yarn, and a small tool pouch. I always leave the scissors at home, but I do bring my little Clover thread cutter pendant, which apparently is also a no-no, but it hasn’t been an issue thus far. I also have a long strand of waste yarn in my pouch just in case there comes a day they don’t let me bring my needles past security. If needed, I will just transfer my stitches to the waste yarn and sadly hand over my needles. And as for needles, I don’t bring expensive ones. I can stand to lose a pair of good $15 needles, not a pair of super fancy $40 needles.

Safe travels over the holiday season everyone!

Epilogue
How’s the rest of the five-year plan going? Well, that same year that I turned 40, I reunited with an old flame from college and we began dating. Two years later, I’ve now sold my townhouse and we’ve begun a new life together in a house with a bigger yard for the dogs. They think he’s pretty great too.