A Knitter’s Lament

There are two very sad things that can happen when you are a knitter.  You can work on a project that you love, and at the end of it, no matter how much blocking or tugging or curse words you use, it just won’t fit.  If you haven’t been there yourself (and I hope that you haven’t), it’s how stories of socks that would fit a Yeti or the sweater that will fit no one, ever, because your gauge was so off that it’s a very small tent instead of a wearable garment emerge.  And that is sad, and you hope at some point (probably many years later) maybe a little funny.

The other sad thing that can happen is when you knit a pattern and size doesn’t matter, and at the end of the whole thing either you or the person that you made it for just doesn’t love the final product.  Try as you might to convince yourself that the finished product can still redeem itself, you know in your heart that it’s really just a lost cause and tomorrow you are not going to love it any more than you do today.

Enter Oeste.

Cast on way back in February of 2012, this project had potential.  It was part of the Steven West Mystery Shawl Club.  As I started knitting it, I wasn’t sure it was my thing.  Even my Husband greeted the pattern with a fair degree of scepticism.  But the triangles were fun and they were turning out well so I kept at it.

And then I started putting it together and really that’s when it all just fell apart for me.  I won’t wear this.  Not ever.  It looks like the spines on a Stegosaurus.  I started thinking that I might actually hate this item.

So into the time out corner for unfinished and unloved knitting it went.  And there it stayed for a very, very long time.  And I hoped that if I left it alone long enough the adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder would be true and somehow I would start to love this scarf, shawl,dinosaur spiney thing, piece of knitting. (In reality, I wasn’t developing a  fondness for it, I was just ignoring the heck out of it).

So this week, it  came back out.  I don’t know if it’s a carry over from leaving my old job and starting a new one, or the fact that the number of WIPS I have going is slightly unhealthy.  Whatever the reason, I am feeling the need to tie up loose ends in my knitting projects, so out it came.  And I finished sewing on the last two triangles, and weaving in the ends.  I liberated my blocking wires from the closet and threaded them through.  And I left it on a towel in my living room with pins and wires and then stepped around it every time I went to that side of the flat for something.

And you know what?  (Imagine the drum roll in your head and take a  big deep breath in)………..

Nothing miraculous happened.  I still don’t like it.  I just don’t.  My Husband has suggested that we use it to cover the back of the sofa.  That might work.  (Ed. Note:  It’s a multi stage plan.  OK, only two.  Step one: Place dinosaur-spine-antimacassar on sofa.  Step two: Give it away to the first person who says they like it.)

But really when it comes to this piece of knitting I am at a loss.  I’m at such a loss that I’m not even sure how to wrap up this post.  I guess the only thing to do is ask, what would you do with a giant, green, Stegosaurus like thingy?