This leads to some thoughts I've been having lately, about sweater design in particular. This is the first sweater I've ever knit for myself. As you may have gathered, I'm a big girl. Sleeves for big-girl sweaters are bigger than sleeves for other people, making them 2485 times more boring to knit. (Scientific measurement.) But you know . . . they don't have to be.
In Borders the other day I was paging through a book of sweaters designed for, shall we say, ladies of size.* I asked my companion (my friend R3, an occasional knitter himself) to tell me what the patterns had in common. When he admitted he couldn't see it, I pointed out that all of the sweaters were shapeless. Baggy. Boring.
Now, there are certainly women (and men) in the world who look good in shapeless, baggy, boring sweaters. Some of these women are even plus-sized. But LOTS of us, if not most, look a thousand times better in something fitted. Whether or not you have curves to flaunt, odds are good you still look better in something that doesn't do its best to drown you. Also, can we talk color for a moment? News flash, my designing friends: FAT PEOPLE CAN LOOK GOOD IN RED. Astonishing, inorite?
So I decided to do something about it. Pictured above along with the sleeve is what came for me in the mail today--The Knitter's Handy Book of Sweater Patterns. I have this vision in my head, you see--of a close-fitting, V-neck, fine-gauge sweater (very like one I already own), in a sophisticated black . . . or maybe a bright crimson. And since it doesn't seem to be out there already--I'll have to design it.
*Note: this is not the famous Big Girl Knits, which features very shapely, fitted (and, not coincidentally, beautiful) sweaters. I've been waiting on the softcover edition and am SO EXCITED you have no idea omg.
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