After taking apart my attempt at Harmonia’s Rings, I was left with a ball of wool and a ‘ghost jumper’. I don’t know why that’s how I thought of it. It had (short) sleeves and most of a body, but no yoke. Perhaps I thought of it as headless?
At any rate, I decided I’d finish it off and donate it to charity. I had live stitches to pick up at the hem and cuffs, and even though I technically didn’t have live stitches at the top (it having been made top down) there was a row there that unzipped pretty readily.
I started at the hem, and knitted about two inches before coming to a realisation. I had initially assumed that I would finish up the 60g of yarn remaining from the skein, then put the pile of reclaimed yarn scraps (from the unravelled stripes in Harmonia’s Rings) back into service, to finish it all in the same colour. The realisation was that I could instead discard the scraps and use a second colour to give contrasting neckline, hem and cuffs. I happened to have the same yarn in a darker grey so off I went!
Sleeves and hem, no prob.
Yoke? Prob.
I tried a raglan and ended up with a comically short yoke – decreased too fast. Unraveled before I even took a pic (or was I perhaps too disappointed in my own error to take one?). And then I put it in a bag and left it there…
I took it out to photograph for this post, and I see a few things that are not helping me feel more warmly towards this project. One is a line across the body where I picked up to reknit. I guess I twisted the stitches, or picked up the wrong part of the stitches, or something? Or could it be because the live stitches have been washed and blocked, and the new ones haven’t?
The second is a weird snarl of stitches that doesn’t seem to have any corresponding reason on the back of the work, so I don’t know how I’ve achieved that.
The last is that the hem flips up. I’ve been here before with hems, and I know there are techniques to reduce it… but I’m hoping it’ll block out our flatten when it’s being worn.
Knowing that the garment is for donation is acting as a demotivator, on this occasion. It’s not an item I’m going to wear, or see worn, and there’s no gift-giving deadline to meet. But I’ve already put plenty of work in, so it makes more sense to finish it than to let in linger in a bag. Right?
The Crafty Yarnster 