Ravelry is a beautiful thing. Among its many virtues is the fact that you can make project pages for all the things you knit or crochet (or weave or spin!), with as much or as little detail as you want. This is mind-bogglingly useful, not only for those times when you want to remember what you did, but also for picking the virtual brains of others who are better at this stuff than you are. Which, in turn, can help you up your own skills.
The downfall, of course, is that you have to actually input the information in order for it to be there later. I really did think I had more pictures of the following tale somewhere, but that was like 2 computers ago, so. I’m sorry. Here is a picture of my cat, who is not at all sorry.
Sometime in 2009 or 2010, when the crochet bug had really bit me hard, and the Doris Chan bug had decided to hop on as well, I made myself a Haru. It wasn’t my first Doris Chan garment – I know this because I actually DO have a project page for that one, and on it I mention wanting to make a Haru. I was also discovering the wonder that is Noro yarn.
If you’re unfamiliar, Noro is kind of iconic in the yarn world. One, it’s got just the one name, only four letters: Bono. Cher. Nike. Noro. Two, because you either love it or you hate it. There is no middle ground. Either you are with the revolution, or you go up against the wall. (“The revolution” in this case being in favor of enchanting and improbable and even jarring color progressions, the aesthetic of wabi-sabi, and natural fibers, many of them rather scratchy; and “the wall” being the staid, unadventurous land of smoother, softer, more well-behaved yarns that are perfectly nice and all, they’re just… not that exciting. Just so we’re clear, nobody gets shot here.)
This is not to say that one can’t sort of straddle that fence as one gains experience with different kinds of yarn. Most yarns, like people, have their features and bugs and things for which they’re particularly well- or ill-suited. But Noro is one of those that even the most diplomatic of experts will have some natural affection or dislike for, whether they’ll admit it or not. I bet even Clara Parkes, deep in her heart of hearts, has an opinion on Noro.
Also, Noro is expensive. Expensive enough that I will still and forever brag about the time I scored a BLANKET’s worth of Noro Silver Thaw at roughly 85% off. (Said blanket pictured above, under cat.) It’s certainly expensive enough that keeping a failed project stuffed in a drawer, hidden away from the world, feels like a bit of an injustice.
But that’s what I did, for several years, because I just couldn’t face it. It’s hard to admit that all the work you’ve put into something just… doesn’t work. You keep coming up with ways to get around the obvious issues: It’s too small, but maybe I’ll lose weight! It’s scratchy, but maybe I can put conditioner in the rinse water, like those smart people on Ravelry say! Okay, it’s still scratchy, but maybe I can wear it over a long sleeve shirt! Hmm, okay, it still makes me really itchy for some reason. I’ll have to think about that some more. In the meantime, wow, this edging looks pretty wonky. I’ll just rip it out and redo it at a tighter gauge…
It was at this point that I learned that one must be careful when frogging Noro. The exact circumstances escape my memory, but I somehow managed to break the yarn in the body of the sweater. And that’s when it went into a drawer for what turned out to be an extended time-out.
Which isn’t SO bad. On the one hand, yarn isn’t exactly a perishable good. It’s not going to go bad like that queso you forgot about in the back of the fridge. On the other, it doesn’t last forever either: wool, when buried, decomposes like you might expect a natural fiber to, but even synthetics decompose eventually. There’s a reason why archaeologists don’t come across a whole lot of textiles in their work, and why it’s kind of a big deal when they do. Not that I expect to be in need of a sweater 10,000 years from now.
And not that I’m afraid of my Haru crumbling to ashes in a dresser while I procrastinate, either. But over the last 8 years, while it’s been sitting there, things have been happening. I’ve learned how to knit, and discovered that I quite like it. I’ve discovered that I personally prefer knit garments to crocheted ones in many cases, and I’ve gotten excited about learning to knit sweaters that fit my body and style, such as it is. I’ve also come down with some annoying health issues and left the work force, which has made being able to afford sweater quantities of yarn much more challenging. And I’ve gotten good enough at this yarn-wrangling thing that I can look back at some of my oldest FOs, some made with very nice yarn indeed, and think, “Ugh, I could do so much better now.”
So, that’s what I’m doing with the yarn formerly known as my Haru. Only took me 8 years to bite the bullet, but hey, it’s hard to take that step of completely unraveling something you’ve made. A lot of it has to do with taking all those ends you wove in so carefully that you’d never be able to find them again, much less undo them – and having to find them, and undo them. It feels like ultimate defeat. Or it did, until I saw a post on Ravelry from a lady who was so unhappy with the sweater she’d knit – out of madelinetosh yarn – that she threw the whole thing away. Girl, you just don’t DO that.
So yeah, compared to that poor knitter (she still haunts me, like something out of Dante), frogging my Haru actually feels kind of hopeful. It’s one thing to acknowledge a failure and shove the thing away “until I feel like dealing with it”. It’s quite a different thing to, even years later, finally open that drawer and say, “Okay, let’s see what we can do with you.” It feels, oddly, like progress.
And here’s what it looks like right now. I’m making a slightly lacy shawl, which won’t be worn right up against my skin unless I put it there – and if/when it itches, I can easily flick it away without actually having to disrobe. Win/win? I guess I’ll find out.
coffee, dog, crochet 