Okay, guys.
You know what?
I’m done with this shit. DONE, I tell you.
This sweater has been on my WIP pile so long I don’t even remember how long. Five, six years? It was supposed to be my first-ever sweater. I was so excited. And then …… a mistake happened. I realized how hard it is to frog mohair. I started fresh. A mistake happened. The sweater got put aside. For years. Picked it up a few years later. Mistake happened. Put it aside. Picked it up at the beginning of the year. Mistake happened. Put it aside. Finally, I decided I was going to finish it this semester break. You know what happened?
When I was finished, I realized my head wouldn’t fit through the neck opening. I didn’t understand why, until I realized I had at somepoint in this half a decade long charade of picking-it-up-putting-it-aside started using different yarn. FINGERING WEIGHT YARN. INSTEAD OF ARAN WEIGHT YARN. I decided to take a week’s break. Then I put on my big girl pants, frogged the yoke, and knitted it again with 8mm needles instead of 6mm. This was a pain in the ass, because mohair, but worked out fine – my big ol’ head fits through, now. I was content. Until … I tried it on for real, and realized the raglan seams on one side were joined the wrong way.
This was the moment when I ragequit a knitting project.
Look, I realize this is stupid. Anyone with a functioning set of eyes can see that the sleeves are different. It’s pretty fucking obvious. I just … was so dead-set on finishing this bloody thing that I didn’t even properly look at it anymore. I don’t like giving up on things. I’m currently reading this Doris Lessing book where she says if you don’t like a book, put it down and read a book you enjoy. Very sensible advice! I’d just never do it. I finish every single book I read, even if it takes me years and every sentence in that book is torture and makes me die a little inside. I just. Can’t. Give. Up. On things.
Plus, you know, when I first started this project I didn’t have the required needles (6mm, 7mm and 8mm). My Grandma, nearly blind at this point, walked from our little suburbs into the city and bought me those needles so I could start the project on that same day. (She didn’t tell me she would. If she did, I would’ve told her I could go and buy them myself. That was my Grandma.) So I was always like, if your near-blind Grandma can walk into the city to buy you those needles, you can bloody well finish this stupid sweater.
But no.
This thing? I’ll put this thing aside. Maybe I’ll throw it away. I won’t try to fix it, I won’t try to unravel it to use the yarn for another project. Maybe, at some point, I’ll buy new yarn and attempt this pattern a second (well, technically … I don’t even know how many times I’ve started this sweater) time. I don’t know. I hate mohair too much right now. MAY IT STEP ON ALL THE LEGOS.
I know that doesn’t even make sense, unless a poor hapless goat will step on a lego and I don’t condone animal cruelty BUT I JUST HATE MOHAIR SO MUCH
One response to “Sometimes, it’s not meant to be.”
[…] I have a nemesis. It’s this sweater. It’s a pattern by Kim Hargreaves called “Calm”. I’m, sadly, not calm when it comes to this project! I’m extremely annoyed. Years ago, this was supposed to be the first piece of clothing I’d knit. I bought white mohair yarn, got to knitting, then gave up because turns out mohair isn’t a good idea for your first sweater knit. (Who knew.) A few years later I picked it up again. I finished all the pieces, but I sewed them together in the wrong way. If you’ve worked with mohair, you know that it’s near impossible to unravel. This is so far the first project I completely gave up on … I believe the term I used was rage-quit. […]