There has, this weekend, been some tinking in the Woollydaze Too household. No, not thinking, I mean wholesale unravelling to the point where ‘knitting’ is an overly complex description. Let me elaborate.
I have/had a cardigan that I have/had been knitting Since Time Began, or ‘for the last 5 years’ [I remember buying the yarn from Knitwell Online, shortly after discovering that one could buy knitting stuff online (thanks, Woollydaze): that was the beginning of what I can only describe as an epiphany in my life]. Unusually, I bought the yarn recommended for the pattern, and not unusually I didn’t swatch (I’m not sure I really knew that one was supposed to swatch for gauge before starting a garment (I know, the naivety of youth/inexperience). And I merrily knitted the back and two fronts, finishing the second front with a flourish and the decreases in the wrong direction (it sloped inwards from outside edge to button band). What followed was at least five attempts to knit the sleeves, foiled by:
1) This being my first ever go at lace knitting.
2) An inability to follow the pattern despite having (mostly) knitted the arrowhead lace back and fronts.
3) A complete lack of understanding of how to increase in a lace pattern, resulting in any increases being swallowed up in the follwing row of lace and one puzzled and frustrated knitter. Now I know that I should have increased in stocking stitch until I had enough stitches for the lace repeat.
4) Starting a new job that rendered me unable to think, or at least knit lace patiently, for the first 6 months of employment.
The weekend just gone was a rainy bank holiday here in the UK, and I’d weeded the garden before the rain came so had accrued some knitting time. Having just finished a wee jacket for some newly parented friends, there was space to think about how to fix this cardigan. And I realised that I didn’t want to.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s a pretty pattern and a good quality yarn and (despite not swatching) I was producing a garment that would (probably) fit me. Despite this, I couldn’t picture myself sitting down and knitting those sleeves, and having knitted and finished it, I couldn’t see myself wearing the cardigan. While this was the right pattern to knit 5 years ago, I’ve learned more about what suits me and how to knit items to fit, and I couldn’t get excited about finishing this one off.
So I didn’t. Oh, I love that when you frog a project and tag it as such, Ravelry moves it right down to the bottom of your profile. Out of sight, out of mind…
