When my mother asked for a new sweater to replace one she’d lost, this wasn’t what either of us imagined. The sweater that went missing was a patchwork of pictorial intarsia and textural panels in earthy colors. I wasn’t going to try to recreate that, but it was difficult to work out an alternative that suited my vision and my mother’s. She’d mention a feature of one or another of my sweaters that she liked, but bringing them together was a challenge. So I did what any sensible knitter would do: I spread out my Elizabeth Zimmermann library and together we pored over the many wonderful designs involving colorwork. Three & One caught her fancy, and I could see ways to add the waist shaping and shawl collar Mum had requested, so we were off to the races. We chose the yarn: Cascade Eco Wool for the base and Cascade Rustic for the accent colors. Ten months later, the sweater is finished.

At some point (well into the knitting, mind you) it occurred to me that I was trying to make a fitted cardigan by stranding a bulky wool with an Aran-weight wool/linen blend. How was this sweater not going to be Michelin-Man bulky and far too warm? But my parents are active folk; when they are not working on their new house they are usually to be found outside doing all the chores that come with living in the woods. And the chilly damp of the Pacific Northwest guarantees this sweater can stand in for a jacket in fall and spring as well as winter.

I thought I’d give it a test run yesterday just to make sure. I had a little vacation in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the weather was unexpectedly fair, so we took the dog for a special outing to the Sandy River delta, where she can run full tilt for as long as her mighty heart and skinny legs desire (which is a very long time… owners of other energetic dogs always thank us for bringing “the rabbit”). There is often strong wind at the delta, and yesterday was no exception. My fingers were quickly raw and I wished I’d worn a warmer hat, but the Three & One was perfectly cozy. (It was even cozier after the walk when we retired to Bakery Bar for coffee and fried egg sandwiches on homemade biscuits. The day was warm enough for sitting outside in the sun, and there was no wind in town.)

It wasn’t until I saw these photos that I realized all was not quite right. Look again… I’ll bet you can spot it, if you haven’t already.

Yeah. I don’t know how I did it, but I sewed all the buttons on half an inch low, and as a result the pattern doesn’t match up across the fronts. I’m sure Mum would wear the sweater and love it anyway, the way Dad wears his gansey with the too-tight hem (my first bout with the tubular cast on wasn’t a resounding victory), but this is not something I can live with. Snip, snip, snip. Off came the buttons and their backing buttons, and up they all moved. Problem solved.

Remember how I added an extra inch and a half to the ribbing of Windschief’s brim in case it wasn’t deep enough? Yeah. It took me about an hour to cut that off, recover the live stitches, and bind off again. Should have trusted the pattern. Stephen West won’t lead you astray, y’all hear?

My friend Leigh pointed out the other day that I’ve got an awful lot of knitting projects going. She’s right, of course. (And I don’t think she even knows about the quilting projects.) Some are very close to completion, lacking only buttons or other finishing details. Some have lost their luster, at least for the moment. I firmly believe that knitting—given that for most of us it’s a luxury hobby and not a means of economy or livelihood—ought to be pleasurable, so I’ve set them aside until the urge for reunion with that particular yarn or design should strike.

I do think there’s virtue in finishing what you start, but there’s also so much joy in the fever of new ideas and the experimenting to see whether what you’ve envisioned can take shape in your hands. Sometimes once I know how something is going to turn out I lose interest in actually completing it. I thrive on the problem-solving aspect of knitting, frankly. There’s always satisfaction in finishing something beautiful, of course, but it’s different from the triumph of hatching a real dragon’s egg of an idea.

All this is by way of saying that I’ve started some more knitting.

I had credit at Twisted and could no longer resist their stock of A Verb for Keeping Warm and Indigo Moon yarns. That’s AVFKW Annapurna in “Burnt Ember” and Indigo Moon Fingering in “Moss Green.” These colors together sing to me like a Bollywood musical. And I’m thinking a baby could best pull them off, so together they will be a wee stripey sweater. Maybe even two wee stripey sweaters. There’s a fair old batch of babies brewing for 2010.

Another reason for new projects to leap onto the needles is pure necessity. I have a husband with an enormous (though handsome) head, and he insists on wearing ugly hats because they happen to fit. There’s a particular little white, orange, and blue lycra number I’d really like never to see unless he is going out for a run. However, you can’t just tell a man not to wear an ugly hat; you have to put a better one in his hand. So I cast on a Windschief in an attractive brown. I’m not convinced that even the largest size will be large enough, but I had to try. I also lengthened the band of twisted rib at the edge in the hope of covering his ears; this hat looks a bit short in some of the modeled pictures, which would make it the next thing to a yarmulke on Mr. G.

At least if it’s too small for him it will fit me. And if it’s too small for me it’ll fit my dad. A hat always fits somebody. And I love this Cascade Rustic wool/linen mix.

Thanks for your responses to the last post, everyone. Seanna Lea offered a useful nudge to remember to give the good parts their full measure rather than letting the bad color the general memory, and that’s advice I’d do well to take to heart right now. So here’s a good thing from 2009: my friendship with Katrin and our cozy almost-weekly knitting sessions. This (last, I guess) year they culminated in a New Year’s Day exchange of Ivy League Vests:

Hello! We are the same, but different!

Don’t you just love how a few color shifts can totally change the effect of a Fair Isle-type pattern? Two of our lights and two of our darks are quite similar, but the two other colors — chartreuse vs. mauve, chocolate vs. burgundy — and the brightness of Katrin’s white and blues give the two vests very different feels.

I’ve already worn mine about four times. Long live the Annual Christmas Knitting Exchange!