baphnedia

I'm working on my first-ever bottom-up knitted sweater, and I'm honestly having a lot of fun. I've just reached the point where I'm almost done with the back, and I am FASCINATED by the lack of back-neck shaping.

[context: the back of your neck is generally higher from your waist than the front of your neck, and this 3D truth is an important sticking point when you knit a sweater from the top down. Everyone talks about making sure the back-neck is raised! It's a big deal!]

But there's no back-neck shaping in my current pattern. I was going to add some, but I went on a tear last night reading knitting advice, and apparently when you knit a sweater from the bottom-up you don't have to worry about raising the back-neck --- but only because you've lowered the front-neck first!

Which is what this pattern calls for.

Of course, when I knitted the front, I actually brought the front neck up slightly -- the collar in the pattern is a ballet-neck, and I prefer something closer to a crew neck -- but I didn't bring it up very much.

So maybe it'll still work. Who knows?!? Not me, that's for sure.

And the best part is how excited I am by this. I get to find out! It'll be so cool -- either it will work, or it will fail in an interesting way and I can try again. That's so much fun!!

I've tried knitting sweaters before, and I've always gotten bored, or anxious, or anxious-and-bored as I get closer to done. I've never felt this sense of playful curiosity with a sweater before. It's so nice!

I feel like the scarf knitting that I've been doing over the last couple of years is really paying off. Not so much in scarves (though there have been plenty of them), as in having a much better idea of what I actually enjoy with knitting.