a question of sleeves

When I'm not blogging about my body, I have numerous crafty hobbies, the most time-consuming at present being knitting. Since I've not yet reached the point of designing my own knitting patterns, I therefore spend quite a lot of time looking at the millions of patterns available online.

Recently, I've gone a little yarn-mad and bought several different beautiful yarns which I want to use to knit things for myself for a change, including some French blue silk which is light and soft and beautiful, perfect for a summery top. I'm limited by a few things – the amount of yarn I've got, the sizes most patterns go up to (a subject for another post), finding patterns that really suit a body of my dramatic curves, and most of all, by sleeves.

I'm looking for a pattern with sleeves. Because I want to cover my arms.

Originally, I was going to knit a rather nice pattern for an empire style tank top with wide straps or a corset top, but as time as passed, I'm thinking, "I like those, but my arms are fat, which will undermine the niceness of the top, and my beautiful yarn..."

But I wonder why I think this. I'm a warm person – even when I was smaller, I got warm easily. It's not as though I need the extra coverage. I'm simply looking for it because I feel like leaving my arms hanging out there will present some kind of visual affront. Never mind that the top might show off my killer rack or (comparatively) tiny waist. It's my arms that are a problem. Note: my arms are the problem. Not "people looking at my arms instead of my gorgeous handknitted top", not "society which judges my arms", but my actual arms are the problem.

This is stupid. Hard to fight, but stupid.

To be honest, I'll still probably go for a top with sleeves, if I can find one. I'm working on getting on with my body, but I'm not sure I trust anyone else to do so yet.

I wrote that earlier and looking at it now, I'm thinking, but isn't that the point? Not that other people have to get on with my body, but that I have to love and approve of myself to the point that someone else's judgement, particularly judgement that is almost certainly going to stay inside their own heads, doesn't carry any weight? I mean, if I'm okay with my arms, and my husband is okay with my arms, then who the hell cares about anyone else's private opinions of them?

The frustrating thing is that I intellectually understand this. It's not that I wish to make myself obnoxious to the world at large, I just want to love myself so much that I'm really okay with being seen.