Thursday, March 02, 2006

To Tink or not to Tink ...

This is the early stages of a shawl. The yarn is a two-ply charka spun (by me) cotton. I am thinking that this shawl has served it's purpose and should now be ripped back.

Last spring I finally got the hang of my charka and starting spinning up a storm. Eventually I finished the first 4 ounces and plied it to an almost invisible-in-places thread. Then I started in on the next color. (I had 4 hanks, each about 4 ounces, each a different natural shade.) The yarn had decided that it would become a very simple pi shawl and would be knit while we traveled around Scandinavia over the summer. I was doing well and spinning it for about an hour an night when my mother-in-law suddenly had a stroke.

At some point during the long week that followed, I cast on for this shawl and then knit it in the hospital. Then I knit it while sitting shiva. During most of the summer it sat in the bottom of my sock knitting bag and occasionally got worked on but mostly I knit socks this summer -- frantically and everywhere. In late August when I returned to work I knit on the shawl during the first meeting or two and then once again relegated it to the bottom of the bag while I knit socks and other things. Periodically it emerged for a round or two (at over 900 stitches per round at this point, a round takes a while) but it always descended to the bottom of the bag again.

Today I took it out and took a good look at it. There are a bunch of messy stitches where it came off the needles while in the bag and unstretched it looks like a crumpled mess. Spread out it is light and airy and I cannot, now, see myself wearing it. I am contemplating ripping it and putting the yarn away until the rest of the cotton is spun and plied. Maybe someday we will take that trip and I will knit good memories in to the yarn but for now it just makes me sad.

1 comment:

shadowlands said...

I agree with you that it is a good idea to rip the shawl out, release all the sadness woven into it, and wait for another time and project to knit in happier memories.

BTW, love the squid socks!