28.12.11

FO: Cria

This is the story of a sad little giant sweater that grew up to be something great.  Our story begins in October 2010 when our intrepid knitter saw a yarn sale on twitter that just so happened to fall around her birthday.  Now our knitter, being the knitter she is, decided that this was the perfect time to invest in some nice yarn and so ordered a cone of Marr Haven Organic Mull Sport in a lovely shade of green.  The yarn arrived, she reveled in its sheepyness, she swatched a bit, and then she put it on a shelf to be admired and generally become one with the furniture.  The poor cone of yarn watched other skeins come into the knitter's life and be loved and cherished while it sat lonesome on its shelf, feeling it would never  become a real knitted item.

Many months passed and the knitter acquired a new knitting book (as knitters are often apt to do).  This book gave many helpful tips about the magic of sweaters and held several beautiful patterns.  The knitter turned to the yarn and said, "Well, I'm all out of sweater wool, so I suppose it is your lucky day" (she was obviously forgetting the discount tweed she had drooled over at the fiber festival).  So the knitter swatched again, blocked her swatch, and managed to find the time to plot out her sweater.  It is here that she made her fatal error.  We like to think that it was due to the thesis clogging up her brain, but the knitter decided that to make a properly fitting cardigan under which she could wear proper long sleeved shirts she would have to knit a bust size that gave her three inches of positive ease.  The poor yarn tried to protest, undoubtedly certain that it would wind up yet another cast off hiding in the closet corner, but it was all in vein.  The knitter had gauge, her numbers, and a sensibly confusing sweater construction and so could not be deterred.

Though the knitter found the sweater more than a bit large very soon after casting on, she continued to knit in the hopes that the designer's ingenious construction would make it all better.  It didn't.  After months of slaving and swearing (We are really not sure how many, she won't even tell us when exactly she finished it.  We know it was sometime this month), the knitter finally decided to at least shorten the body and the sleeves for the sake of the sanity of all involved.  She then tried on the sweater, knowing it to be too large, and proceeded to stare in the mirror, willing it to shrink or at least not hang like Phoebe's wedding dress when Cole mucked it up.  Suddenly she was struck by inspiration.  To this day we believe it was the yarn speaking to her through it's new snuggly sweater form.  She unpinned the sweater and moved the buttons to the side of the neckline, giving the sweater more of a military look (it quite suited the Soviet military buttons our knitter had set aside for this purpose).  She also discovered that with the addition of the buttons the weight of the sweater shifted ever so slightly and it suddenly became a very comfortable, drapy cardigan, rather than a potato sack.


To this date we do not believe that the knitter has taken off the sweater.  If you happen upon her (the wool fumes got to her and she's run off again), you'll undoubtedly see her, wearing her now almost stylish green sweater, snuggled under all that wool that is finally loved the way it deserves.


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