To Rip or Not to Rip?

That’s often the biggest question when it comes to a project that’s just not going to plan. In this case, it’s a pair of mitts. I bought the pattern on Ravelry and while I loved the original design, the measurements were never going to work with my (apparently) freakishly small hands. At its widest, the mitts hold a circumference of 68 stitches, but a little mathing showed that even with my smallest needles (2mm), knitting at my usual tension, anything over 54 stitches was going to be too big. And there’s no point knitting mitts that’ll just slide off your hands, right? Right.

So I did what any passionate, obsessive knitter would do and rewrote the whole pattern. This meant redrawing the image and rejigging the lettering and fixing the decreases and resizing the thumb hole and basically just starting all over.

Which I did.

But now I’m not crazy about my colour choices (big surprise there, I hear you say) because I feel there’s not enough contrast. And for all my careful math, I feel I could get away with a few more stitches in the circumference. Those floats make the mitts quite snug.

So. This means I’m faced with two options: knit on, or frog. I’m leaning towards frogging. I’ve yelled and raged and had a cry and now I’ve entered the final stage of acceptance and I think that means frogging the fucker and starting over. What would you do, O Blogverse? Ever had a project you worked so hard on only to end up frogging and starting over? C’mon, spill. Make me feel less incompetent and we can commiserate together.

(This is the first mitt, by the way, just before beginning the decreases.)

WIP of Doom: Episode Laika

Today I’m going to tell the story of Laika, an unassuming deep purple cardigan with a lovely all-over lace pattern that I just had to knit, and which became, through a series of unfortunate assumptions and associations, a WIP of doom.

A little over four years ago I was home in California, visiting my family. My mother had recently gotten on board with my knitting obsession. She doesn’t knit, or sew, or cook, or do anything domestic whatsoever. When I first told her I had started knitting (like my grandmother, her mother), her response was: ‘Can you not afford clothes?’ Her associations with knitting were passed down from her mother, a Depression-era hoarder who was a master at all things domestic, who loved to stitch and sew, knit and crochet, but who sadly passed away before I was able to pester her enough to teach me any of that. Anyway, that’s another story. So my mother and I had been struggling to find common ground, and while she likes to shop, I hate it, but the one thing we could do together was shop for yarn.

So that summer was July 2013, and it was HOT. I was visiting with my just-turned 4-year-old son and my 13-month-old daughter. Going anywhere was a pain in the ass. We had driven out to Danville, CA, to this cute wee yarn shop called A Yarn Less Raveled. The kids fell asleep in the car, and I didn’t want to wake them. So my mom and I took turns going into the store, because I can’t resist a good yarn store, and because she was curious and wanted to see what the fuss was all about. I didn’t spend long because the kids were asleep and I was aware she was waiting. When I returned she asked if I had spotted anything nice. I told her about this Madelinetosh Merino Light I had seen, the clematis colourway, and I asked if she thought it would make a nice cardigan. Specifically, Ysolda Teague’s Laika cardigan. Here’s a pic of the yarn:

 

Photo from Jimmy Beans Wool

 

Here’s a pic of the Laika cardigan:

 

Photo from the Laika Ravelry page. See above link.

 

Then she went in. She was in there forever. The kids woke up and were bored. They started to whine. Finally, she came out. She had bought me 5 skeins of clematis, and had them wind it into cakes. I was bowled over. That night, I started to swatch.

Fast forward a year. I had barely made it past the first few rows due to one thing or another, but I was determined to get cracking. I was ready to separate for the sleeves, but the pattern didn’t make sense to me. There were many Ravelers who had figured this out though, and I thought I was just being stupid. I posted on forums about it, tagged friends on social media to have a look at my stitches. No one could suggest where I went wrong. Or rather, there seemed to be a lot of suggestions, but none of them seemed an accurate match to what I held in my hands, and I couldn’t seem to convey the issue. My stitch count was correct, my line up was correct. But the described increases would not match the 3-stitch repeating lace pattern that continued following the sleeves break. Even Ysolda was stumped. Disgruntled, I carried on.

That summer was a disaster, in fact. I got pregnant, which was no surprise in itself, we’d been trying for over a year. But it didn’t feel right. I had miscarried before, and it was horrific. This was just…odd. Turned out it was an ectopic pregnancy, and it ruptured one evening during the Twelfth holidays. Expecting a long wait at the hospital, I brought my knitting to keep me distracted. Yep, I thought I would work out this lace pattern once and for all to distract me from the pain and confusion. Ha. (Spoiler alert: it didn’t.)

Fast forward another couple of years. I would pick up the Laika every once in a while, knit a few rows, become annoyed all over again at my wonky increases and decreases, and set it down. I couldn’t rip it out, I couldn’t continue. I didn’t want to give up. It had come to symbolize too much. My mom bought me the yarn, even though she didn’t understand my obsession with knitting. She didn’t understand me but she was willing to try. I had persevered on this project in the hospital, when I was loneliest and at one of my lowest points. It wasn’t perfect, but it was there.

A few months ago I decided enough was enough. I dug out the remaining skeins, finished the body, and started on the sleeves. I whinged and moaned and bitched about them the whole time, but I finished them. I had some real come to Jesus moments about the collar: I had decided not to knit the hood, because as much as I loved the look, I knew I wouldn’t use it. I also decided against the buttons; I had been a stone and a bit lighter when I started this project, I had no idea if it would even fit. I scoured existing projects on Ravelry looking for inspiration. I liked the look of a zip. And then one night, late into the night, it was suddenly done. I tried it on, and it was perfect.

 

Soooo, the moral of this story? Sometimes projects do bad things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re bad projects. What’s your biggest WIP of doom story?

The WIP of Doom

Last week I finally finished a massive wip of mine. This shawl took me just over two years to finish. It was a nightmare. The pattern wasn’t written very clearly, at least to my understanding, none of my stitch counts matched, I felt like I was flying blind. But I knit into the darkness and came out – only slightly scathed but somewhat traumatised – on the other side.

I love the yarn. It’s Zitron Filigran lace in the colourway Indian Summer.

I had received one skein as a birthday present and, a year later, when I decided I’d knit Ipomoea, I searched desperately for another skein. I found it, and cast on immediately, knitting alternately from each skein to blend the slight variation in dye lots. I knit and knit and knit…

…I knit through one summer, and then through the next. I knit intermittenly through good times and not so good times, and through the pregnancy and birth of my third child. And then I decided it was time. It was time to finish the fucker once and for all.

Pardon my language. Ahem.

Fourth of July weekend I was in my mother-in-law’s house with the kids, and I had just about had enough of this shawl. Since the final chart no longer made an ounce of sense, and I was sick of making up the lace repeat from looking closely at the picture every row, I made the decision to cast off.

 

It was glorious.

A few days later, I had a brief opportunity to block it. It took up most of the kids’ bedroom floor.

 

But I’m proud of the result. I’m sad it didn’t work out, but this wip of doom had had a good run and it was time to move on.

 

Onto the next adventure!