Finally, A Sweater Post (or, why Slow Fashion is SLOW)

During my August vacation I managed to convince my family that a stop at the Briggs & Little factory in NB was in everyone's best interest, or at the bare minimum, my happiness. But they love me so it didn't take much convincing. And I bought a lot of yarn: Two sweater quantities for projects I ascertained a need for in my wardrobe, and a number of skeins for smaller projects. And my parents bought a sweater quantity as well, with the intention of giving it to me to turn into a sweater for my dad. I've waxed poetic about Briggs & Little before, but I love Canadian sourced and spun yarns, and the texture and longevity of B&L is phenomenonal.



And I started a sweater that day, and knit all through my vacation. At the Hopewell Rocks:


Outside the Alexander Graham Bell museum while my siblings flew kites:


At Green Gables:


In the car with siblings:

On a variety of boats:

While child minding:

While playing board games:

Seriously though; by the time I got home from vacation and back to school, I had two sleeves and a body knit up to the arm pits. I've knit this sweater once before, so I knew that the upper body goes very quickly, and then I'd just have the button band.



And I was right: the button band and upper body to go quickly. But it also helps if your sleeves fit. The last time I knit this sweater, the sleeves were too huge. So last time, I ripped them out and knit some sleeves in stockinette, and I really like them. This time, I sized down on the sleeves, but now they were too tight! So again, I ripped. The sleeves weren't small by a lot, and I didn't want baggy sleeves, so I increased 2 stitches every 16 rows, and they're wonderful. So overall, it took me 3 or so weeks more than I expected, but still less than two months. And other stuff got knit in that time.



I love having this album of all the places I knit this sweater, because I think it points to two important aspects of slow fashion. Firstly, that it is slow. Sometimes you have to frog and reknit in order to have a perfect knit that will actually fit into your wardrobe and be worn and worthwhile. And that process does take time, and in order to finish anything, you will need to chip away at it. Secondly, it emphasizes connection to place. Now my sweater doesn't just exist as a sweater, but a list of memories about how and where I spent my time, with friends and family and enjoying my surroundings. All of those places are now memories paired with wooly memories, and that makes me smile. The sweater has a story that even exceeds my travels, since the wool comes from all over Canada, and I took the sweater to many of those places as I travelled.

I've been wearing the sweater for several days now. I also wore it yesterday to the Woodstock Fleece and Fibre Festival. Soon I'll have actual FO photos for you, but today is not that day.



So that was my SlowFashionOctober lesson. Patience leads to longevity. Longevity serves the earth. The earth sustains us.