Today is Thursday, March 2, 2006.
I just tried to claim it was March 2, 2003, when I typed the date. Must be my trembling hands...hands that have just spent an hour ripping Snow Sky. All the way. Or perhaps I am wishing it were 2003, before the idea of Snow Sky was even a twinkle in my eye. Just kidding.
First there was the flurry of posts about ripping back on the SFCKAL discussion list. There was ripping back to correct guage that had mysteriously gone awry. There was ripping back to change a color that wasn't looking right. There was ripping back to fix errors in motif and errors in construction. There was a gnashing of teeth, but also a certain bravery and an air of commitment in all that ripping.
Then, over at Bobby's place, there was ripping out to abandon one sweater in favor of another. He was ripping out and dying, too. Not that he was dying, he was dye-ing, so he could use the yarn from the abandonned Celtic Knots to knit the Afghan jacket. More bravery and commitment.
All that ripping caught on with me. I had a good 6 or 7 inches of Snow Sky on the needles. There were some mistakes in it, but I knew they wouldn't be noticeable in the whole field of the completed sweater. And yet...those colors. They weren't working for me. In the picture in the book, the darker color looks more black than gray, and the contrast is much more distinct than my knitting was looking. I just...didn't like that dark gray. It mushed together with the silver.
This morning, commuting to work, I said to myself, "So. I'm going to spend hours knitting this sweater only to not like the colors? I don't think so." I called Schoolhouse Press and they are sending me black to replace the charcoal gray. Eleanor commented, "I can see why you'd like more contrast," perhaps hoping to soothe me with the balm of reassurance. Tonight I came home and announced to the children, "I'm going to rip the sweater." A great wail escaped their small gullets. They both knit (because they're Waldorf children!) so they both know from ripping. No, Mom! No! Don't do it!
But I did it. And now all that is left of Snow Sky is a couple wonky balls of charcoal gray and silver yarn. Six skeins of dark gray are going home to Schoolhouse Press tomorrow. Meanwhile my stepdaughter will be gratified to find that while I await the black, I will be knitting her sweater, which for the last two weeks has been relegated to lunch-hour knitting on weekdays...a simple, mindless, colorful yoke sweater in worsted weight on size 7 needles. Man, that thing is just flying off the needles.
I was going to photograph the wonky balls of yarn. But how exciting could that possibly be?
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