Make haste slowly

In my childhood I distilled that often heard phrase to being deliberate in jobs that parents thought could be done quickly and efficiently. Walking home from school, for example. Stopping to look, play, visit could be fit in easily. Finishing reading, another one. What’s one more chapter.

My sock yarn, scrappy sweater has been on display a couple of times. It is now the epitome of slow haste. Haste in that I once was a speedy knitter. Even when my interest diminished, my fingers remembered, and I could always turn out a pair of socks for someone for Christmas.

Before the brain whack last spring, the sweater was finished, except one sleeve. However, when I showed it off to my knitting group, last meeting before I took granddaughters to DC, I was very unhappy with the ribbing I’d used to finish the neck, bottom and one sleeve. I used a double strand there, too, and it was just too bulky. The “haste” of making haste slowly.

At that meeting I said the ribbing needed done in a single strand, and I occupied myself unraveling the cuff and picking up the working row. But, worse luck, I dropped several stitches at the beginning of knitting, on size 3 needles. Too small and obscure to pick up in the dim light of the restaurant. “Well ladies,” I announced, “I need to go home and find these stitches under good light. See you in two weeks.” I haven't seen them since.

I picked up the sweater, and the stitches, a month ago. Home and Garden TV must be my background entertainment, and the reruns are getting old. Drew and Jonathon are still OK, and so are Chip and Joanna. Tiny homes is still new to me (like I don’t live in a tiny home!), and most of the ribbing has been replaced.

After Laura was roused from bed to model the sweater, I took the last sleeve stitches off the string and put it on a circular needle. I still need to redo the neck, but there is a hope before this winter of someone wearing the sweater.

I know some of you knit this raglan sleeve pullover. Until this sweater, I knit the sleeves when I reached that point in the sweater. I didn’t know what I would do for sleeves on this sweater, and certainly don’t have stitch holders that might work, so I pioneered and found the turkey string to hold the stitches.

Last fall, I think, I was talking sweaters with Ruth, my daughter’s mother-in-law. Ruth gave me some red wool, partially knit into a sweater. Beautiful red red. Serendipity came with it; I looked at a site that has hundreds and hundreds of old patterns. Not cataloged, just a link. Periodically I open a few more links, in my search for an old pullover pattern, with short row shaping. With the red yarn in sight, it was my first hit. I printed it and will make it next.