I’m working on my transitional weather sweater (hopefully). This sweater took 3 years to knit, and it has prompted some thoughts on making teen-tiny-itty-bitty steps forward.

I knit a lot.

I have a handful of unfinished sweaters hanging about, and thanks to a swift kick in the butt from the self-made wardrobe project I’m finishing a bunch of them up.

This particular sweater has taken me 3 years and 1 month to finish.

As far as sweaters go, this one is pretty straightforward.

But the interesting thing about it, is how much my knitting has changed since I started it.

My actual gauge hasn’t changed (thankfully), the actual number of stitches per inch is the same as it was three years ago. But my knitting has changed.

My stitches are straighter.
My tension is more even.

You can definitely feel the difference.
And up close you can see the difference.

The fabric looks and feels smoother.

If you had asked me, before I picked up this sweater, if my knitting had changed in the last three years I would probably have said “yea, but not a whole lot.”

But it did.

I did some quick guesstimates of the number of stitches in most of the shawls I’ve published patterns for between starting and finishing this sweater, and the total comes out around 788,000 stitches.

I can knit about 30 stitches a minute. (In a lace pattern, relaxed, and following a chart. Averaged over a couple hours with breaks, pauses, etc.)

788,000 stitches.
437 hours.
16 shawls.

When you think about the fact that that’s only the knitting I’ve done for the patterns I’ve published, (no swatches, no sweaters, no unpublished shawls), that’s a lot of stitches, and a decent amount of time.

Turns out my knitting has changed quite a bit over three years.

One stitch at a time.

Over 788,000 stitches later.