Back when I was still substitute teaching, I remember sitting in a kindergarten classroom while the children were at recess, knitting a scarf and considering various methods of faking my own death before the bell rang. The morning had taken just about all I had, and an afternoon uninterrupted by gym, library, or art stretched before me. The class's rightful teacher had for some unfathomable reason placed her desk right next to the bathroom, and while there may be some coordinates on the map that offer a more noxious sensory experience than a kindergarten bathroom, at the moment I couldn't think of any. In rushed one of the recess aides with a slightly green little boy named Ryan. He flipped the bathroom doorknob sign from green to red, closed the door behind him, and loudly vomited. Unfazed, the recess aide began admiring my knitting. While Ryan heaved and the aide chatted away about her attempts to learn to knit left-handed, I tried to ban the uninvited thought, "Whenever I look at this scarf, I'm going to think of this day." The scarf is a cheery bright red, knitted in an impressive feather and fan lace pattern, warm and soft. Although I must have worked on it at home and in countless other classrooms, and several other places, too, when I look at it, my only association with knitting it is little Ryan throwing up. That red scarf spends a lot of time in the back of the closet.
The Front of My Second Ugly Sweater
My most vivid memory of knitting my baroque-colored sweater is of watching a movie on TV with my husband one night after tucking in the children. It was cozy to be working steadily along, making good progress on the front. The movie was absorbing and all was right with the world. Abruptly, my mood changed as I gasped at what was sliding through my fingers. Something had gone awry in the dye vat, and a two-inch section of yarn was completely white.
Even though I love nothing better than a yarn bargain, this was not some knock-down, odd-lot, cut-price stuff I was knitting. This yarn was purported to be first-quality goods, and it came from a large and reputable yarn concern. My affrontery knew no bounds. Maundering about expecting better treatment than this from a company that should know what they're doing by now, I tinked back to the beginning of the row, cut out the blight, and carefully checked the next few yards in the skein. It seemed all right, and in fact I had no further trouble of this kind. I resumed my knitting and my customary cheerful mood. I've forgiven the yarn company, but as you see, I haven't been able to forget.
Since then, more than one knitting book I've read has offered the sensible tip of pulling out a row's worth of yarn and checking for knots or other irregularities before starting to knit each row. It's a good idea, but despite my own distressing experience, I never follow this advice.
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W.I.P.
The problem the first time around with my dark rose heather sweater was this: it was going to be striped. I had bought four skeins of that color and one each of two successively lighter pinks and a complementary blue. The yardage would have been more than sufficient, I swear. I really planned it out carefully. Since I was unwilling to bother about matching the sleeve stripes to the body stripes, I was going to make dropped shoulders. I striped my way through the ribbing and virtuously started up the back when I was sidetracked by what seemed at the time to be a much better idea: Why not take this opportunity to throw in a few fair isle patterns? I had found a book with some easy-as-pie charts, so I impetuously changed horses in mid-stream.
This was not my first attempt at fair isle knitting. About a year and a half previously I had made two holiday sweaters for my teddy bear Sam and his friend, one in red and one in green, each sporting a white Scandinavian snowflake. I had lifted the chart from a hat pattern, and it was just the right size to fill the front of each sweater. The bear sweaters came out so well that I forgot what a nuisance I found fair isle technique to be. After untangling my way through only a few inches of my pink and blue sweater, however, I remembered why I had so resolutely returned to single-color knitting. So far did my wish for simplicity extend that I disdained even to return to the stripes. Not troubling to bind off, I left my suspended sweater on a needle and banished it to a storage box. I cast on anew for a single-color sweater in the dark rose, rashly thinking that if I ran out, I could always match it up later. Of course, I couldn't, so Nicky Epstein's clever traveling cables have been in hibernation until now.
Purls of Wisdom
From Elizabeth Zimmermann's Knitting Without Tears: "Discrepancies will ocur between dye lots; even with white, even with black. Never start a project without sufficient wool to finish it. But on a rainy winter's night who can resist three or four skeins of wool, pleading to be made into a sweater? 'I'll go to the wool shop first thing, and match the wool.' Oh dear. Famous last words."
Tomorrow
- My second ugly sweater: the v-neck.
- W.I.P.: Frogging is such sweet sorrow.
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