This is the story of The Sweater I Did Not Knit. 

It is not a story about a sweater I considered but decided
against knitting.  Nor is it the story of
a sweater I began but did not complete (a common enough “yarn” – some people
have skeletons in their closets; we knitters have skeins in our closets).  This is the story of a sweater brought into
being without my knitting a stitch.

If you read my blog earlier in the summer, you may remember
my mentioning a Beach Sweater for Max. 
Somehow in the flurry before my daughter Sonja’s wedding, I was struck
by the idea that Max should have a sweater (handknit, of course) for our trip
to the

Oregon

coast in August.  I said to Sarah:  we should knit a beach sweater for Max.  And she (also caught up in the pre-wedding
flurry) agreed.  After all, we had a
couple of weeks before our trip.  And
baby sweaters are small.  And, certainly,
Max would look adorable toddling on the beach in a sweet little sweater. 

So, I found a pattern in an old book (we would have to size
it down, as the smallest measurements given would fit a 3-yr-old).  We escaped from the family and dashed off to
the yarn store.  The pattern called for
several colors of yarn, so we got to play with color combinations for a while
(we had chosen a summer-weight cotton/tencel yarn).  Bought several skeins of all 5 colors we
needed and headed home. 

Neither of us is fond of knitting stockinette for any length
of time.  So, we came up with a texture
pattern for the body and sleeves of the sweater and a variation for the
upper-body and upper-sleeve.  We measured
Max and calculated the sweater size.  We
decided a garter hem would be loose and beach-ier than the ribbed one in the
pattern.  And then Sarah offered to swatch.   We both enjoy swatching a new yarn and
pattern, so I did not feel badly at all letting her do so.

Once Sarah and swatched the yarn and we calculated the
stitch numbers, Sarah said she would go ahead and start the sweater.  Now, Sarah and I work on joint projects all
the time.  We knit with nearly identical
gauge (genetic maybe?).  She had bailed
me out on Max’s Easter Sweater when I could not face the endless stockinette wasteland.  We fully intended to knit this sweater
together – maybe passing it back and forth, maybe one doing the body and the
other doing the sleeves.  True
partners.  After all, we had made the
design decisions together, worked the calculations together – certainly we
would both do the actual knitting. 

Except it didn’t work out that way.  Sarah would say: I am going to leave the
sweater here for you to work on.  Or:
When I get to the color change, I’m going to give it to you to knit.  Or: 
Don’t you want to start the sleeves? 
But somehow, the sweater was never left with me (or maybe it was….for a
day or two…).   I admit I began to feel a
bit badly, but the truth was that I had my own project going:  a capelet for Sasha (daughter #3) which I
also hoped to have ready for our Beach vacation.  So, Sarah got to the color change part, saw
me chugging away at row after row of moss stitch, sighed, and kept
knitting.   Thus it went with the sleeves
(by that time we were at the Beach!).  I
did finish Sasha’s capelet in time for her to wear it once on our
vacation.  I’m afraid Max’s Beach Sweater
never hit the sand.  Home again.  And it was time for the sewing up.  Sarah and I have very different versions of
why she ended up doing all the sewing up – so I will judiciously print
neither.   At the very end, prickling
with guilt, I begged to sew in the ends. 
And I did so. This is the story of The Sweater I Did Not Knit

And Sarah (feeling a bit used – though I maintain my
intentions were honorable) said I had better write about The Sweater I Did Not
Knit – and put in a picture of Max in his Beach Sweater That Makes A Good Fall
Sweater Too.  And so I did.