Things that can be mended: sweaters and maybe grudges, too

Finding happiness where you're at, even if that place includes a sweater that gapes and apologies that aren't going to happen

… like, why are we here and where do we go and how come it’s so hard …
—Jack Johnson, “Better Together”
(one of my favorite lyrics of all time that pretty much sums up
what it’s like to be human)

Two seemingly disparate things have been on my mind this week: a newly-finished sweater that didn’t quite fit how I wanted it to and a long-standing grudge.

this is the sweater after I mended it. I’m now much happier with the fit. Also, welcome to my very own living room!

This is my Northwoods V-Neck by Jessie Maed. I wanted a slouchy drop-shoulder v-neck sweater for spring, and while I have two drop-shoulder sweaters in my queue (the Northwoods and Aimee Sher’s Building Blocks Drop), I wanted a v-neck first, so I cast on with my Targhee Sweater worsted weight yarn in a new palette I’m playing with. (The colorways are Foxtail, Dogwood, and Moonlight.)

I had fun playing with my own striping sequence. If you look at the Northwoods pattern’s photos, you’ll see that the sweater has no darts or shaping and a sort of “arc” in the front. For some people (and certainly looking at the pattern pics), this feels like an intentional flirty detail—a curving peek of tummy, or a curving line of stripes.

But it didn’t quite feel right on my body. The shoulder seams felt like they drifted backward when I wore it, making the v-neck less deep, and the sweater just felt … off …. I noticed that, on mornings when it was a bit cool and when I otherwise would have reached for a sweater like this, I passed this one by.

I’ve had a few sweater fails in a row lately, and I’ve been bummed out by it. I knit for the pleasure of knitting, but I also knit for the pleasure of knowing I’m adding a beautifully made, perfectly fitting item to my wardrobe. I want to look in my closet and feel abundance and pleasure. So, this sweater started to feel a bit like a grudge: a small thing I resented for all the ways it wasn’t what I wanted.

But I know how to can change a sweater. So, I started the process of learning what I didn’t like and how to change it.

I learned that some sweaters rise up in the front (this can be more or less exaggerated by the amount of ease in the sweater, the size of your breasts or belly, etc.) For me, my breasts were quite simply using more fabric in the front center to go over them, and then the stripes were sloping down to the sides. When you’re sewing a woven fabric top, patterns will add more fabric in the front with a dart. (I learned a lot from designer Jen Parroccini’s blog post on how she added darts to her sweater after-the-fact).

My own “sweater surgery” attempt with grafting wasn’t to my liking, so I simply ripped out the bottom part of my sweater, washed the yarn, and re-started it, going all the way back to just under the V. Here’s a quick summary of the mods I made:

• I decided to knit the front and back separately since I needed to tinker with the stripe sequence in front but not in back. (I seamed the sides together with mattress stitch).

• I added a very small 1.25” of short-row fabric in the front (6 short rows), and measured the striping sequence from the center, so the center stripe (with the darts) becomes narrower at the side).

• I reduced the width of the last stripe on the back, so the contrast ribbing would start at the same point.

• I added a neat little high-low split hem just for fun.

And here’s how the new sweater fits:

I love how it feels just as much as I love how it looks. The sweater still rises a bit in the front center (which now feels cute), so I could have used more short rows, but I love how I did all of this with the striping, narrowing the yellow at the front sides, and adjusting the back yellow stripe. It feels seamless and unobtrusive. And, now that I know what a dart looks and feels like, I feel well-equipped to knit my crew-neck Building Blocks Drop with perfectly-measured darts!

Every time I wear this sweater, I’m trying to let it sink in that, just like knitting, other things can be mended too. We can let go of the disappointment and still hold on to the hope.

Which brings me to my grudge.

I started my yarn business, Little Skein in 2013 with what can only be described as wide-eyed, early Internet, white feminism. I was full of excitement about the power of the Internet to connect people, was making friends with other knitters all over the globe, and was oblivious to the pervasive whiteness I was putting out and absorbing. I was this kind of knitter: I set alarms on my phone so I could catch the latest indie dyer update, I lamented when I was cart-jacked, and I over-bought yarn.

A few years before the pandemic hit (when Trump was elected and started amping up the white supremacy, I was bowled over with a sort of “how in the hell did we get here” feeling), I began really looking at how whiteness was threading through my liberal world views. I didn’t like what I saw. Not in my business and not in our industry.

If I’m bluntly honest with myself, I formed a lot of grudges. It wasn’t just being mad at someone who held a different view but a sort of nugget of resentment that other white makers weren’t learning or changing or doing better. I’m not talking about the knitter who’s browsing knitting Instagram, but knitting business owners who make their living by setting styles and sharing inspiration. People with influence who espouse liberal views and yet, still, stay oblivious to the ways their influence cements a culture that excludes others.

(Other writers have written amazing pieces on the negative influence of “aspirational” social media in different domains, from the toxic culture of momfluencing to how “beauty” is a class performance, so I’m not going to deconstruct how knitting social media does these negative things too. If you’re here, I trust you see it, too.)

I also believe the only person we can truly change is ourselves.

And yet, there are those grudges.

My own pesky, persistent grudges stem from a place of hope and good intentions. They form because I want to be part of an industry that does things differently. That unravels whiteness and is a model for others. An industry that says, “See? It can be done. We can build truly inclusive spaces where everyone can take a deep breath and find solace and connection. We can make enough money while doing it. We can be generous and successful. We have enough. We are enough.”

And what industry is more ready for this than one that values making things by hand?

That’s the rub for me.

I can only change myself, and yet I want this change for all of us.

So, I’m trying to let go of a grudge, and it’s hard. It feels like mending a piece of my heart. I need to, and yet it’s still hard. I still want the apology that isn’t going to come. Yet, I also want to let go of wanting the other person to be different and still be able to hold onto the hope that we can all be different. Build something different.

It’s been a little while since I’ve had yarn in the shop, and I’m pretty excited to share that next Sunday, there is going to be a lot of yarn in the shop!

As most of you know (and I want new folks to know, too—hello to all the new people here!), I dramatically rescaled my business in 2021 to take on greater care responsibilities for my family and myself. It’s been a hard couple of years, not just for my family, but for you, too, and all of us. Seriously. So hard.

My family and I have gone through so much that I write about and so much that I don’t share. We survived a global pandemic, y’all. We’ve made peace with the pandemic and its impacts. I asked my teen yesterday what rating he would give the whole experience, and he said 1 out of 10 stars. So, yeah. Do not recommend, and also: look at what we have all done. We are here. And that is something glorious.

I’m in the process of retooling my work and yarn business, which is why there hasn’t been much yarn in the shop, but there are two things I’m offering this week that, if you would like to join, I would love to have your support!

1. A tip jar for this very newsletter! I will eventually be shifting this newsletter to one free per month and the other 3-4 for supporting subscribers, but until I’m ready for that more significant shift, I’ve opened up subscriptions as a tip jar. You can support my writing for $5 per month, and this goes directly to me for things like Molly’s kibble and a living wage and paying our mortgage, and saving a bit for retirement. It goes towards enough.
   
   If you can become a supporting subscriber, I offer my deepest gratitude.

2. My yarn subscription club, Kindred Spirits, is open for new members! My yarn club is a mainstay of my business and it’s such a joyful supply of yarn. I bring you along while I create a new, surprise colorway for you and you get a new skein every other month.
   
   I create timeless skeins that will always have a place in your stash: low-contrast, complex colors that look semi-solid from a distance and gorgeously tonal and lightly speckled up close.

Here’s the mood board I created for the skein that’s shipping to members right now:

And here’s how the yarn turned out:

The colorway is called 🪶 WARBLED 🪶 and I won’t have it in the shop anytime soon, but, I can promise: the next club colorway will be just as gorgeous. I pour my heart into the club and, four (five?) years into it, I still find endless inspiration and creative energy to share.

My wish for you today is that you are able to hold hope in your hands. That your sweaters suit your style and your body just so, and that if they don’t, you’re able to mend them. I hope the normal grudges we all form—those hard little spots of resentment—I hope you’re able to see them for what they are: desires, yearning, wishes, and longing. I hope the apology comes, and if it doesn’t, I hope you can hold onto the deeper hope, anyways.

With love,
Anne