This is a lovely knitting book:
The pictures are beautiful and are coffee-table-book worthy. Visually, it's a wonderful book. Unfortunately, knitters tend to have a few hangups about knitting books. It's fine and dandy to show them lovely pictures of shawls, but if , with the aid of said book, the knitter cannot recreate any of the patterns, the knitter will probably get really cranky.
Right now, I'm one of those really cranky knitters.
There are two problems with this book. One is the number of mistakes in the book. Now a great way to mess with a knitter's mind is to mistype the directions on a complicated lace pattern. Knitters are usually in awe of "designers" and will berate themselves for not being able to make the pattern come out correctly. It usually takes a couple hours, language that would embarrass even Hollywood, and several repeated attempts before the knitter realizes that it is the BOOK that is wrong, not the knitter. While being right does not make up for the lost 3 hours of your life you just spent getting to this conclusion, it does help a little.
This book, however, has a second more unique problem. For the average knitter, the patterns grossly underestimate the amount of yarn required to finish the project.
If yarn were like anything else in the world, this might not be a problem, but some knitters, being trusting souls, bought the stated yardage in a rare yarn that they encountered at a fiber festival (yep, such things exist). Sometimes they have spun their OWN yarn from hand-dyed fiber, which would be impossible to recreate. Sometimes they have scored a fabulous laceweight yarn on clearance, which they will never be able to find again. Sometimes they can find the yarn but not the dye lot, which means the new yarn won't exactly match the yarn they already have, creating very interesting shading problems on the knitting. Sometimes they declare stupid spending bans that don't allow them to buy anything new for 90 days.
This is what I have so far:
It's hard to photograph a lace shawl while still on the needles, but this is a wonderfully soft mohair with just a tiny bit of sparkle to it. I still have two rows on the body to do and then an edging all over the entire shawl to do, and I have this much yarn left:
I'm not going to make it.Feeling really nervous after the pajama episode (when having foolishly NOT consulted the pattern, I came home with 1/2 a yard short of this:
which I could not locate after the December spending ban lifted, leaving Andy with:
pajama bottoms and no pajama top, and leaving me with a little bitterness toward the entire fabric industry--but that's another story), I checked online for this yarn.
It is being discontinued, but there are still a few balls available.
Option 1: Don't order the yarn, and have wasted $80 on really expensive mohair that can't be ripped back because when you knit mohair, all the little wisps of mohair lock together to form an insane bond that Scotch tape can only envy.
Option 2: Alter the pattern to do a much simpler border, thereby changing the entire look of the shawl which was the whole reason to make it in the first place.
Option 3: Wait anxiously until the ban has lifted, then hope and pray that I can find the dang yarn, which worked so freaking well for me with the pajama incident.
Option 4: Persuade someone ELSE to order the yarn for me and hold it until the ban has lifted, thereby proving I have indeed lost my mind entirely.
Option 5: Order the yarn, thereby breaking 2 bans (the 90-day ban AND the self-imposed "No New Yarn or Fabric" ban) and admitting that I was beaten by little miss Sowerby and her lack of test knitters.
[Note: I'm sure Ms. Sowerby is truly a lovely person, and I freely admit that my heartfelt desire to kick her in the shins at this moment is MY issue, not hers]
My loving spouse and I had a conference, and we have decided that we are both allowed 2 exceptions during this time frame, and that the exceptions truly must be special case scenarios, and that we both have to agree to them. So tonight I ordered the yarn.
Blast it!
But I'm NOT going to open that darn box until AFTER the spending ban has lifted. Little Miss Sowerby can only push me so far.....
3 comments:
I really admire your experiment, and your tenacity. I'd be making all sorts of excuses about spending $8 to save $80 not really counting etc.
Your spending ban is certainly thought-provoking and inspirational. I'm following it with interest.
Ouch! I have heard about the yardage problems with a bunch of patterns in that book.
I have also had that happen to me and thankfully everything worked out. Of course now that I have said this we all know what will happen next time..... = )
I firmly believe that this purchase does not qualify as NEW yarn.
This is merely old yarn that lied (or in this case the pattern did, but let's blame the yarn too) and the acquisition of additional yarn of the same variey to complete the project is more in the nature of topping up your cup of coffee. It's not a NEW cup of coffee. You couldn't possibly have known at the time that you will defniitely need more to complete the shawl as designed and altering the design of the border negates the whole point of making said shawl.
I think you are excused for this one. Particularly given the grave threat of its imminent disappearance weighed against extensive time and the blood, sweat and tears already committed to the otherwise incompleteable intricate lace shawl.
Caveat emptor (which could be a subtitle for your experiment, no?): Having said ALL that, I do think that you must take care, because it is a slippery slope. This instance could lead to further rationalizations and then successively more flimsy excuses to lapse, which will push your deadline off to absurd lengths.
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