Repetition

I've been working on the Artyarns diagonal tank. I'm almost finished with the front, and as I was knitting I was thinking about the fact that the back will be mostly the same as the front, and I'm not looking forward to knitting the same thing again. In fact, this pattern is particularly bad because the left and right are done separately, so really I have to do a bunch of stuff that I've already done twice for the front two more times for the back.

I was thinking about the fact that I dislike knitting the same thing more than once (doing the second sleeve on the hourglass made me miserable, I lost all my excitement after the first pattern repeat (of 10!) on the wavy scarf, and I can imagine that if I ever start knitting socks I will end up making a lot of singletons), but a lot of people seem to really like knitting the same thing over again. Other people often seem to finish projects and say "that was fun; I think I'll make another." I think for me the thrill is really figuring out the pattern and watching the design emerge from the series of stitches I'm doing. It's all about the magic of the individual stitches, which aren't much on their own, adding up to something really cool. This is especially true with the Artyarns tank because I was really amazed to see how those k1inc1s caused the whole thing to become a series of triangles. But once I've seen how a pattern works once, a lot of the fun is gone and the knitting seems a little like drudgery.

Ironically, as I was thinking about this, I kept noticing that the Artyarns tank looked too big. Then I realized that I'm about half-way through my yarn...but not yet half-way through the tank. For the size small, you're supposed to make the bottom edge 17 inches. And it was 17 inches at one point. I had measured it, but I'd been very careful not to stretch it because I didn't want the whole thing to be too small. But then I think adding the sides had the effect of stretching out the bottom a bit. It's now 19 inches. I don't want it to be too big, and I really don't want to run out of yarn. So I'm going to rip out a bunch until I get down to my original triangle so I can make it 17 inches when very lightly stretched.

Which means I get to knit most of it over again.

This is what it currently looks like, but soon there will be much less to it.



On a brighter note, here's a little peek at my first color stranding attempt: