The Rhinebeck Sweater, Maybe

I’m theoretically working on a Rhinebeck sweater. Or maybe not.

The issue with knitting a Rhinebeck sweater is that you actually have to knit on the Rhinebeck sweater in order to have a sweater completed in time for Rhinebeck. This implies:

1.) Actually knitting — as you may notice, at this time I am typing a blog post. While I have figured out how to read (rudimentarily) while knitting, I have not yet figured out a workable way to type while knitting.

2.) Knitting on the aforementioned sweater.

I bought the yarn for this sweater (Skylark by Martin Storey) back in January from my local yarn shop, Uncommon Threads, using a gift card I received for Christmas. I cast on somewhere around the beginning of March after rewriting much of the pattern to accommodate knitting the body in the round, substituting mistake rib for twisted rib, and moving beyond the dreaded (but Rowan-loved) phrase: “Repeat, Reversing Shaping.”

Rhinebeck sweater? Heck, this should have been a summer sweater.

But other projects beckoned. I decided to see if I could weave some really big, cozy yarn into a super-cozy wrap on my rigid heddle loom. (Hint: I could, but it involved learning how to use sizing.)

I decided my friend Susan really needed to receive a Nightshift shawl for her 50th birthday. I decided I needed one, too.

I gave in to Stephanie Pearl McPhee‘s urging and tried knitting socks her way, one at a time, from the top down, on dpns. (Hint: I hated it.)

I took a dive into brioche.

I organized my spinning stash.

I planned and taught a bunch of online classes and worked up teaching samples for them.

I wrote a pattern for felted coasters (coming soon!), and test-knit some samples. (That is more knitting than it looks, because they are felted).

I fiddled around with a shawl design (coming not soon!) and ripped it out many times.

Sometimes, I knit the sweater. Sometimes, I knit the sweater and then ripped back because I saw but then chose to ignore my own notes to myself.

Sometimes I got distracted by an idea for a new workshop series — like this one, in which I would teach how to knit socks without a pattern by having you knit a Christmas stocking. (Anyone interested in that?)

So here’s the Rhinebeck sweater, two weeks before Rhinebeck. It consists of a left front, most of a back, most of a right front, and no sleeves. Let me own that I am not a particularly fast knitter.

Any bets on whether I can pull this thing off?