knitting: puffin #1

Cast on for Kate Davies’ Puffin Sweater last Tuesday. There wasn’t much to take a photo of before this, as it was just a mass of black! It still is a mass of black, but at least there’s more of it. Plus, I had to wait until I was sufficiently convinced that I wasn’t going to have to rip everything out before saying a word about it. (Before starting for real on Tuesday, I had abandoned about 10 rounds of ribbing after realising that I had joined the stitches twisted. Silly me!) My first sweater in a long, long time.

(That’s Knitpicks Palette on Knitpicks circs. Splitty at first, but much better now. Working with 50g balls makes the knitting zoom by!)

This project was supposed to be my Winter Olympics knitting… four years ago. I can’t remember why I never followed through; maybe I just took too long to get around to it, and then Virtue/Moir placed second and I lost all motivation… Anyway, they won gold this year, so I guess it’s apt to pick the project up again.

I found that I only knit about 30 stitches a minute, which is painfully slow compared to The Real Pros, who have reportedly reached speeds of 60-80! Of course, if I wanted a knitted garment quickly, I would probably not have tried to make it myself in the first place, because I could’ve gone to Your Fast Fashion Giant of Choice or even bought one of those looms*. Still. Efficiency. Something about that is like a siren’s call–come, knit faster.

You guys, I’m zooming through the body of this sweater, but I just realised yesterday that it has sleeves. Two of them! Will I get stalled? Will I persevere? Stay tuned to find out! I’d like to know too.

 

*OK, frankly, I’ve never tried one, but just thinking about another project on the list that will feature a kilometre of yarn being turned into stockinette, I reserve the right to buy and use one.