Thursday, April 17, 2014

Resurrection from The Heap

Rummaging in the stash closet for something else, I rediscovered a bagful from the Heap of Malfunctioning Rubble. It has been composting in the heap for so long, I have no idea when it was actually started, but once brought to light, it seized my fancy for some reason.


It's the Brocade Leaves Sweater by Solveig Hisdal, purchased as a kit with original yarn. The design is the cover feature of Hisdal's very popular book, Poetry in Stitches. (Yikes! I just had a look at what the book is selling for these days--$100 bucks for a knitting book!)


So why had I abandoned it to the Heap? For starters, I had converted the pullover sweater to a cardigan. No problem, really. After knitting most of the body, I discovered a big blooper: two of the yarn shades are very close, off-white and light peach. The big flower motifs were supposed to be done in light peach, and by the time I got to the sleeves I had used up a significant portion of the white in the body. The two yarns are very very close (hence my mistake), and it doesn't seem all that noticeable if the sleeve flowers are peach and the body ones are left white. You can see how close the colors are below. There's hardly any white left; the big ball is peach. So far, so acceptable.


But the boo boos keep coming. The body is 2 inches longer than it's supposed to be at the front/back divide. Now we're looking at running out of blue yarn. Gulp. No way to know for sure, but it might happen. Especially when a cropped cardigan version of the pattern shows edges finished in a light blue knitted band. (see Poetry cover) but the final thing that sent it tumbling into the Heap was the size. The pattern is provided in only one size, a rather oversized medium. At the time of abandonment, I was a very oversized XL. It wasn't going to fit, and there was no use putting a lot of time and effort in rescuing my other mistakes if the bloomin' thing wasn't going to fit anyway. Well, dear reader, I am myself now an oversized medium, and there's a very good chance that after blocking it will fit! Game on!

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