Enough

I bet you've all been glued to your terminals waiting to hear if I finished the sweater in time.

Define "finished" and then define "in time."

Does finished mean all the knitting is done? Then it's finished. Does finished mean all the pieces are blocked and sewn up? Then it's finished.

Does finished mean the ends are woven in and the buttons sewn on? Does finished mean I'm happy with it? Then it's not.

I need to remember that a cardigan can be knit in almost one piece. I need to remember short row shaping for the shoulders so I can join the shoulder seams with a three-needle bind-off. Should I forget about short-row shaping again, as I surely will, I need to remember to slip the first stitch of the bind-offs. I need to remember to place my decreases farther in, maybe two stitches instead of only one.

Most of all, I need to remember that set in sleeves are just not worth it. I actually kind of enjoy sewing side seams. For that matter, I don't even mind the stitches to rows at the sleeve cap or the stitches to stitches under the arm. I think it's the whole setting the sleeves that gets me. All that pinning. all those transitions, from cap to sides, from the sides to the underarm. What with the pinning, stitching, ripping back, re-pinning, ripping out, I probably spent three times as long attaching the sleeves to the body as I did on all the other seams combined. The worst part? Even with all the checking of techniques from my various knitting books, even with knittinghelp.com and Berroco how-to videos on YouTube, even with all that evidence that I have sewn the sleeves in exactly how they should be, I'm not happy.They don't look as bad as they did before I steamed the seam allowances toward the sleeve,

but I'm still not thrilled.

It didn't help that the sweater still looked like an amoeba when Their Father got home. So, dinner and cake and pie and other presents and cards later, I picked up the sweater and finished the side and sleeve seams. Ends still hanging all over. No buttons. But at least it looked like a sweater. And it was before midnight, so I say it counts (my blog, my knitting, my rules).

Consider "enough." "Enough" means wanting for nothing, "I have enough." Enough can mean having too much, "I have had enough of this [fill in the blank]." Enough is adequate, sufficient, satisfactory, decent.

So, was it done? No. Not really. But it was done enough.