Not Everything You Make is Worthy

After you've been knitting for a long time, you can get a little tired of the things you've been doing and suddenly a "What if...." moment pops into your head.  Just bear in mind that not all light bulbs flashing on are winners.  Sometimes you follow your moment and end up with something you wouldn't really want to display.

My summer has been a symphony of these moments and some have lent me some marvy new ideas while other, although finished, should probably not see light of day.

I refer to my liberal use of soutache to hide mistakes.  It all started when I mastered I-cord on my knitting machine.  Zip, zip, zip and about ten minutes later you've got 12 yards of cord.  If you wind it this way and that, you've got soutache, a nice pattern of whirls that you can tack down and cover things.

Here's what worked...those nice cross hatches in the white area at the bottom of the sweater.  I suppose you can see what didn't.  The soutache below the nice cross hatches was meant to cover a mistake in the number of rows.  It worked, kind of.  The other soutache was meant to offset the heaviness at the bottom.  Altogether I like the idea, but this first application just didn't do it for me.  I shall press on though.

Here's the second "What if..." moment.

I'm still knitting the sleeves, but that bodice of the sweater is just fine and the sleeves will be too.  I got thinking that I'd like to turn the stripes in the other direction on the skirt and shir them.  Again the I-chord, yards and yards of it, came into play.  I'm envisioning delicate stripes and gossamer shirring.  I end up with material that's too heavy and too wide in the stripe.  It's not fit to sell, or give away.

But here's what I learned for the time and energy I put into both garments. The ideas were good, but I need to experiment with a wider gauge of knitting if I want gossamer. Then maybe I should gather with a length of yarn, not I-cord.  I need to cut the yarn and begin a new color so the stripes aren't so wide.  The idea of soutache might be better done with a firmer yarn - the red yarn was wimpy and the heaviness of the soutache dragged the drape down.

All is not lost.  I have shown both items to friends who think they are marvelous, but it's not what I had in mind.  I now have a better idea of how to achieve what I really wanted in the first place.

Knit and learn, friends.  Keep coming back and hugs to you and your projects too.  Pat