UPDATE on Knitting My First Sweater

My usual on-the-go knitting project is socks. Since I hadn’t made as much progress on my sweater as I would have liked, on my recent work trip, I packed my sweater-in-progress to be my travel companion for nights in my hotel room after work.

I even thought about not packing any other knitting but my sweater to force me to work on it. In the end, I packed 3 sock projects, my sweater and my pouch cover.

I ended up working on all of the projects for a couple days of my trip. For the sweater, there’s something wonderfully meditative about working the body in the round. The fabric grows quietly, almost sneakily. You don’t notice it at first. Then suddenly you’re holding what’s really starting to look a lot like a legitimate torso. Not a swatch. Not a hopeful beginning. A real, wearable expanse of fabric.

A couple of hotel evenings turned into cozy little knitting retreats while watching true crime. After dinner, settling into stockinette felt like exhaling. The rhythm of knit, knit, knit became my wind-down ritual. No brainpower required, just yarn sliding through fingers and rows stacking up like calm.

My knitting was derailed by another bout of sickness so I would have gotten more knitting done if that hadn’t happened.

The good part? I’ve made some more progress on the body. I knit about 10 rounds. For now, I’m happy with the steady progress.

If you knit sweaters, tell me: are you a travel sweater knitter, or do you stick to socks and smaller projects on the go?