A lovely pink Rowan yarn flew all the way from Cleveland, Ohio to enter my stash cupboard. This was 8 years ago, when knitting was just beginning to raise its crafty head in the horizon of my mind.
Just when this lovely Rowan yarn flew in, a superb knitting book fell on my head ,while I was browsing the aisles of the British Council Library. Those were the days when I knew the scientific principles of knitting as fluently as the grammar rules of Mandarin.
It did not take long to open the book, fall in love with a lovely pattern, pull out my knitting needles and that lovely yarn, and knit myself a sweater. I stayed up nights, stopped cooking/watering plants/watching TV and just knitted away.
Actual measurements, gauge swatch, checking progress on myself—none of these things happened. When I had completed the project, darned every loose end and made the sweater look posh and spiffy…I wore it….and sobbed.
The lovely sweater was big enough to cover me and my daughter. “Tent” would have been an apt description. And “elephant in the tent” would be me in that sweater. And NO…I have no photographic evidence of that disaster!!
The doomed sweater languished in steel trunks for 3 years. Sunlight would touch it, when all the woolies were opened and aired before winter. I just had to look at the sweater and this huge wave of sorrow and disappointment would wash over me and leave me angry (at myself) and sad ( for that lovely pink Rowan yarn).
3 years of that routine, and I then decided to unravel the entire pullover and re-knit it to the correct size. By then, the pattern book and my Library membership had vanished and there was something about looking at those balls of unraveled yarn which felt like salt on my wounds. The balls of yarn went back to the stash cupboard for some more years.
This year, the first fall issue of Knitty, did some magic. The right pattern, the right yarn and the right gauge came together in this pattern.( link to knitty). This cute cardigan, in that lovely pink yarn, would look terrific. BUT…..Where on the mountains would I lounge around in a little lacy number around the shoulders, when my feet were always wearing socks and my head had its collection of caps?!
I knit the pattern anyway.. I loved the process of knitting something which would fit my waif-like daughter, instead of making a tent or cape for all three of us to shelter from the snow and rain.
The cardigan is ready, except for that one large button which has to enter my world. My daughter is going to get this one, and she had better love pink, cotton cardigans!
Can this cardigan be termed “new”?! The pattern is new, the measurements are for a new wearer, and after all, this is the first time the yarn is going to be worn. So what if the yarn is 8 years old in my stash, and there may have been some more years in a yarn shop in Cleveland too. Cotton yarns have graded color ways ( a nice way to describe faded shades), so age does not lie in the eye of the beholder. Cotton doesn’t crinkle or crackle or crumble after storing it for a few decades, so this cardigan is good to go for many years before my daughter gets tired of it.
All things considered, I have knitted a new piece of clothing with some old new yarn..and it’s a new addition to the list of finished projects—the list that every yarn ball aims for!!
Welcome!! New cardi from old new Rowan cotton yarn…you are in great company in “The New Finished Project List”.