Work in progress: Jane, the deep V sweater

Where I’m at with my latest project and overcoming problems with decreasing, unintentional increasing and perfectionism

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My latest project is a replacement sweater for one that’s falling apart. Again. I really do wear my clothes to death. This one is a pink job with a deep V neck that I’m recreating, updating and hopefully improving.

So far the main challenge has been working out how to do the V neck. The idea is to layer a top underneath this one, either in a matching or contrasting colour depending on how I feel, so it’s important that there’s enough space to show off the top underneath, but at the same time the slope has to be nice and even. After a combination of maths and experimentation, I think I’ve got it sorted and the V is coming along very nicely.

The logical part of my brain isn’t very loud and nearly always gets drowned out by the louder, brasher perfectionist part of my brain

In fact I’m really enjoying knitting this as the frequent decreases and very deep V neck mean that the front piece is almost done. It hasn’t all been plain sailing, though. Just last week, 30 rows into the left-hand side of the deep V, I realised I had one too many stitches. I had done the right number of decreases. I definitely had the right number of stitches at the beginning. So where had that extra one come from?

The alpaca yarn I’m using, while gorgeously soft and mostly a joy to knit with, can be rather splitty, and that’s what had happened here. I’d split a stitch in two some 24 rows back. I could easily have incorporated an extra decrease to sort the mistake out, but my brain just doesn’t work like that. I had to pull it all back and start again.

I did something similar last night when I realised I’d decreased at rows 112 and 118 rather than 114 and 120. The logical part of my brain tells me that these things don’t matter, that these mistakes are easy to fix. But the logical part of my brain isn’t very loud and nearly always gets drowned out by the louder, brasher perfectionist part of my brain. That part tells me that I have to go back and make it right. So I do. And really I'm OK with that.

The front piece of the Jane deep V sweater is almost done.
Photo by Idoru Knits.