I could feel what was happening while I was at Knit City. It began the morning I left, when I had just cast on for the first sleeve of my Rhinebeck sweater.  I knit in the airport lounge, and on the way to Vancouver…

and when I arrived at Savannah’s, I’d finished that sleeve, and was just beginning the next.

Fast forward through three days of teaching and speaking, and somehow, even though I just about knit a pair of socks at the same time, I had two sleeves.

Now, let’s be clear. This pretty much isn’t how a Rhinebeck sweater goes. You don’t just cast on and knit the thing without anything going wrong. Nature abhors deadlines and does her level best to see me crushed in the face of them, so that I can be perfected in my humility. That’s how Rhinebeck sweaters go. This one? I don’t know what to think.  I was worried I wouldn’t have enough yarn, so the universe granted me a seventh skein. I was committed to getting gauge no matter what it took, so I got both stitch and row gauge on my first try. I was worried I wouldn’t have time, and now it’s flying along, practically knitting itself, and get this… I finished the body of the sweater, and I knew that I wanted it to be longer than my brown sweater, so put it aside until I could measure and knit the extra. I did the same with the sleeves, knitting them until they were just short of where I thought I needed them. I knit some socks until I could get to the brown sweater in question, and measured both and do you know what?

They were perfect. Not just shy, not almost… not close enough for company work, they were bang on. I was so shocked I measured three more times and then actually laid the green sweater parts on top of the brown sweater because I thought maybe the measuring tape was malfunctioning.  I had guessed exactly right, and I was ready to join the sleeves and the body to start the yoke, and I don’t want to freak you out or anything, but that was Monday morning that I was just starting that part,  and now… well, I’m almost done.

I still have to do a bit more of the body and upper sleeves, and the saddle shoulders, and I don’t want to get cocky and ignore the giant collar or the pockets, but I’ve pretty much got ten days to do that. Ten days!

It’s like a Rhinebeck miracle. Everything has been so perfect and pretty and worked out so entirely without flaw, that I’m starting to think that I should be keeping this sweater in the back garden at night, in case it bursts into flames or lightning strikes it.  I have noticed a few things though… Monday night I tried to get out of a cab without it, and only the driver noticing saved me. Today I just about left it in a shop, having put my bag down to pay. That first time my passport was with it, and today my wallet was in the same bag, and that got my attention. It’s like nature’s finally figured out it’s a Rhinebeck sweater, and doesn’t care if she takes out my other possessions or my short term memory to do some harm to the thing.

I’m going to start being more careful, and you might not want to stand to close to me for a bit. You know. Because of the risk of lightning.