In the years that I have been blogging about knitting, I have shared some whackadoodle projects. There were the octopus pajamas.
There was the Cthulhu balaclava.
There was the monkey-face sweater.
But this sweater that I am trying to finish-- it takes the cake. How does it confound me? Let me count the ways. First, it's a hip-length laceweight sweater. It was always going to be a boatload of knitting. It's not just a boatload of knitting, though: it's a boatload of lace knitting, with a type of construction I'd never encountered before -- one in which you build from a suspender to make a sleeve. Oh, and can we talk about the grafting in pattern? Because there's lots of grafting in pattern. I spent months avoiding the first whack of it, before I knuckled down and braved it out.
Even so, I was making progress. I'd get to a spot where I'd think, "I...don't think I have the brainpower for that part right now," and I'd stash it in a bag for a while. Eventually I'd get it figured out and inch along to the next sticky bit.
First sleeve, check, despite the tricky cuff. Second sleeve, check; ditto. Back, completed, even though I thought I'd be grafting in pattern until Jesus came back. Waist, surprisingly easy. Skirt, modified slightly from the pattern but not hard. Just sloooooooooooooow. The whole thing is slow. Next month will be two years since I cast this sucker on.
On paper, it looks like I don't have much left to do-- just the lapels and some sort of closure. The lapels are the most distinctive thing about the whole sweater. It's called Tortuga, and there are little knitted turtles making their way up both lapels. They're so cute! And also so fussy! Each turtle repeat is 50 rows. Each turtle binds off 25 edge stitches. I'm...maybe not going to think about that very hard right now.
I made my sweater a little longer than the pattern called for based on an email exchange with the designer. This means I'm knitting six turtles on each lapel, twelve turtles with their little beaded eyes.
I I fear the world's turtle population may go extinct in the time it takes me to finish these lapels. The sun might have morphed into a red dwarf at that point, and I hear that the whole dying star thing isn't optimal for healthy turtle populations. I will drag myself out under its umber light, my arthritic hands clutched around my long-awaited turtly lapels. I may be the only person alive on planet Earth, but BY GOLLY I will be the most stylish.
(The turtle in the picture still needs a beak. I was just too busy contemplating the heat death of the universe to give him one tonight.)
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