I NEED A DIFFERENT OLDER SISTER. If I had one, she would know how I should fix this sweater. Margaret does not. And she doesn’t even like the sweater, so we’re done.

Well, really we’re not really done, because despite the fact that Margaret doesn’t knit, somewhere out there is a sister who will step in with the skills to tell me what to do.

I’ve previously gotten all kinds of good advice on other needling issues on our knitalong group on Ravelry, as well as wonderful feedback here on TSP when I suggested we all knit ourselves new wombs. So I just know that someone can tell me what to do. (I’m used to that; on other issues I simply turn to Margaret. Co-dependent? Who cares?! We get the jobs done.)

So: Hot-water wash? Reknit the neck? The dreaded dryer? The problem, as you can see, is that the cotton sweater knit, oh, now 15 years ago, has stretched out so much in the neck that it practically slips off both shoulders; it always slips off one.

Thoughts? Please knitters: Unite and help a sister.

No related posts.

SOCKS AND SWEATERS? WHY? When you can have a brand new, bright pink uterus! After reporting that I had knit mere socks following my recent fibroid surgery, several knitting sisters emailed me an alternate suggestion of what a perfectly sane woman such as myself might instead have preferred to have on her needles during such a time. Do I hear the call for another Ravelry knitalong? (Thanks to the archives of Knitty for the image, by M.K. Carroll.)

No related posts.

I KNIT, SHE DOESN’T. It’s one of the stories of our she said, she said lives. The fact is that I have a sweater/sock/hat/something for every high-emotional holy day of my adult life.

There is my “bullet-proof” sweater I knit myself when I was still single to stitch while talking myself away from a relationship that was killing me (no real guns involved; clever people, we wielded only emotional projectiles). There is my-mother-in-law’s funeral sweater knit on the drive to and from Indiana. (Before that there was the my-mother-in-law-gets-diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease sweater, knit on the drive to-and-from Indiana to label her kitchen drawers and simplify her life; I barely got to wear one when I had to put the next one on the needles.) There’s the Gulf War sweater, knit while I sat semi-stunned by a war with commercial breaks. Fibroid-surgery-socks, and the cat-just-died hat; don’t get me wrong, I knit during happy times, too, but those projects rarely get named.

Until now. Now everything I knit I’ll be naming after my online sisters, ever since Paige started a knitalong group on Ravelry, that uber-deluxe knitting community. (You will need an “invitation” to join Ravelry; just a formality, so don’t be put off.) Now my sweaters/socks/hats will all have the prefix of TSP, as in our group, appropriately named thesisterprojectknits.

Which is where I met Needles of Iron, as she likes to be called. And she, in turn, introduced all of us—via her blog—to her sister (that’s them together a few years ago, tee hee, in a photo from Needles of Iron’s post). This is worth its weight in cashmere.

Sisters, knitting. Knitting sisters. Got a sister who just won’t knit? Don’t despair: Join up, grab a sister, and knit on.

No related posts.