It’s the yin and yan of life….creation with destruction….growth with decay….summer days with winter nights.
This season, my knitting has been on ‘the anvil of destruction’, more often than in ‘the cradle of creation’! Two huge knitting projects, with amazing pure wool yarn and super patterns, have gone totally astray. I seem to be fulfilling some past karma of insisting on ripping out mistakes-filled-shawls. The knitters would have wished me a similar fate, and now, after four knitting filled winter months, its time to rip it all.
This lovely cardigan from Brooklyn Tweed had been in the knitting queue for 2 years. I had procured the Loft yarn from the US, got the pattern, taken a zillion measurements and read every project note posted on Ravelry.com. The swatch was made perfectly, the knitting took 6 long and exciting weeks, and when the final piece came off the needles, it reached my ankles in the most unflattering way possible. I will rip it down the basic yarn now…soon…after the heartache ceases.
Two months of heartache with our ailing Biskit drove all thoughts of knitting from my head. The only thing which could be done, as it was small, mindlessly easy and working towards clearing the stash of a zillion little bits of wool, my daughter and me started on these crochet blocks. I would make the fiddly inner circles of three different colours, and she makes the outer colour block.
We have completed about fifty blocks.The project is a bed-cover which will portray my life in Ranikhet. Every block has a little story behind the colours, and some day, when the entire project is complete, I shall regale you with the individual tales embedded in the bedcover, a lot like Madame Defarge and her knitting!
The second knitting masterpiece, which is being ripped out these days, is the Stonecutter sweater. I have knit it earlier, in acrylic yarn, and its looking superb on my cousin. When it came to knitting it for me, in pure new wool, the sweater became a tent after I completed and blocked it. HUGE…..
It is now being modified…from a sweater into a tunic. The sleeves are being ripped out, the armholes are being tightened, and I am hopeful about the final shape.
I am also learning lessons of humility and hope, and in the meantime, Pepper guards the crochet blocks from the shifting moods of my mind while I try to complete this bedcover.