Finishing Anxiety

Does anyone else get like this when the time comes to finish a big project?

I’ve been working on making Elsebeth Lavold’s Jarngerd for my Mom for months now. She wanted a cardi with pockets. I found the pattern and she approved it. I gave her yarn options and she chose one (Debbie Bliss Cashmerino DK), chose a lovely color (#05 Clover), and bought the yarn for me.


(This is the only photo that gives a good sense of the color - though it's not quite so blinding as the flash makes out. The rest do better justice to the texture.)

The way has not been entirely smooth. There were some errors in the pattern that required me to chart things out for myself. (There were some not-entirely-satisfactory emails with Ms. Lavold about these.) There were instructions for short rows that happen at the same time as a fairly complex cable pattern, followed by instructions to “reverse shaping” for the opposite side (one of my least favorite pattern instructions in general). Over Thanksgiving, I discovered that I’d made a rather stupid mistake from the beginning when reversing the instructions for the left front, which I didn’t fully grasp until I was all the way up to the shoulder. Rip rip rip rip rip rip.

So now, as the Christmas home stretch closes in, I find that I have a mere few inches of stockinette on the last pocket left before all I have left to do is seam the rest up. One sleeve cap is attached. The tricky cabled yoke that joins around the back of the neck is done and sewn in. The buttons are on (I love them).

So here’s the thing. I’m so freakin’ anxious all the time. I have these lurking thoughts that actually my gauge is way off and the whole thing will be too narrow. That the sleeves won’t have enough ease. That the place on the back of the yoke that pooks out won’t settle down with blocking. That there are more errors in the pattern that will become obvious when it’s all put together. That once it’s blocked, it’ll be clear that the sleeves have to be entirely redone, and the washing will have fuzzed the yarn up enough that it’ll be impossible to rip things out to redo them.

I feel that I will, in fact, do whatever it takes to get this sweater so I’m happy with it. Well, almost whatever it takes. Starting over is NOT an option. Neither is redoing any of the really big pieces. But redoing the sleeves or the yoke is not out of the question. So if I’m resigned to that, why do I want to crawl out of my skin every time I look at it?

Now, I know I’m a perfectionist in lots of ways, but I know with all my heart how wonderful a knitted item can be even when it’s far short of that. Heck, one of my favorite sweaters of all time is the first sweater I ever made (when I was seventeen), and it could fit about three of me in it.

But this design is so elegant, so cleverly conceived, and so perfect for my Mom, that I have a deep sense that the finished object Must. Be. Perfect.

I want my Mom to adore this sweater. I want it to fit and flatter her perfectly. I want the pockets to be just the depth she was hoping for. I want it to be as if I was giving her a hug each time she wears it. I want everything about it to be right, even if everything about me isn’t always right.

I guess all I can do is forge ahead, one seam at a time, and see what happens. But the suspense is killing me.