Starting Over
By its very nature, knitting keeps me from getting too attached to the things I create. I find that most of the treasures I create end up being given to other people, and I’ve always been somewhat reckless about trying to fix even the smallest errors no matter how many rows back they are. I have been known to frog pieces that are nearly halfway done because I don’t like the way the thing looks. Such actions usually make Allyson cringe or gasp, but I just can’t abide knitting something if it’s less than ideal.
This morning, I had to face a hard truth. The “pattern” I came up with for Stephen’s Slytherin hat just wasn’t working. The patch I bought is just too big to go on a hat. Before leaving for work today, I calmly took out my scissors, severed the piece from its yarn lifeline, took it off the needles, and then chucked it in the trash. I had worked on this hat for about three or hour hours.
I’ve decided to consign the patch to a Slytherin scarf and just do a plain ribbed hat in green and silver. This is the first key decision in actually getting the hat done. I was never particularly fond of the concept for the first version of the hat, and I like my vision/pattern for the second much better. The second key decision in actually getting the hat done is that I’m doing the second hat exclusively on DPNs. I don’t enjoy working with circulars nearly as much as I enjoy working with double-pointed needles. I find that DPNs help me keep my mind on the actual task of knitting in a way that the comforting lull of circulars never enforces. This project is causing a bad case of knitting constipation to be honest, and it has reinforced my knitting philosophy that I should never do projects that I’m not excited about and I should never use materials/fiber that I’m not in love with. I find that I can’t knit other things lately because I end up feeling guilty about letting the hat sit in the corner. As such I’ve done maybe four or five hours of knitting in the last several months.
This will not stand.
Having renewed my vigor and connection to my inner buddha nature, I set out casting on 81 stitches in the library before work. Before long a middle-aged fellow walked by and did a double-take as he went by. Less than a minute later, he had come around the corner again with a woman in her mid-thirties.
“I think this patron might need your help,” he quipped at her.
“Do you really need my help or is he just teasing?”
“She comes down here at knits everyday on her break.”
“What are you knitting?”
“A Harry Potter Hat for my nephew. Slytherin. I’ve even got a patch and everything.”
“I made one of the scarves. They’re so boring.”
“I would imagine. They’re so long and just stockinette.”
“I know! They want them even longer than you want to make them. They’re so fucking boring. Excuse my language.”
“Don’t worry about it. Really.”
“I also spin to make my own wool. I have some new Icelandic wool upstairs. I brought it with me just so I could smell it today. I’m a little crazy, I guess.”(1)
“We all are, I think. That’s what makes us fun.”
Footnotes
- I wonder if this is a common thing with knitters, this apparent wool fetish. I hope I’m not prematurely outing Allyson, but I know for a fact that she routinely stops knitting to bury her face into the skein and just sniff the natural fibers. The smell of wool, alpaca, or pretty much anything that came off of a living animal is enough to make Tux stalk balls of non-moving wool on shelves. Upon catching his intended prey, he just grabs the entire skein and starts violently shaking it as if to kill it. I often wonder what he would do if he lived around sheep. I mean, he would inevitably catch on eventually to their skittish nature and inherent fear of pretty much anything. I just have these mental images of my cat leaping onto a ewe and trying to fell her by violently shaking her wooly coat.