Saturday, December 22, 2007

Build a time machine and go

I suppose there is no reason I should have been surprised. Say you knit most of an item, the kind of item that generally comes in pairs, and then put it aside for a year without noting the specific needles used, trusting to your knowledge of what seemed at the time the only possible correct needle size for the job. Say you then picked it up a year later, finished it off with different sized needles (by design) for the last part. It looked great. You washed it and it looked even better, and it seemed a good size too. So you embark on the second of the pair, reasonably sure of the needle size. Partway through you think it is coming out a bit... looser? Could your tension have changed? Do you need different needles after all? But you knit on through this minor doubt.

So then, do you have any right to be surprised when the second half of the pair, after its bath, is obviously - HUGELY - bigger than the first.

I'm still holding a little hope that it will shrink as it dries. I may even have blasted it with the hairdryer on hot just to help it along.

Also it's possible that the second one will be a better fit for the recipient, so at least I can be pretty sure I will be able to replicate it when I knit it again. Sigh.

5 comments:

Bells said...

oh I wonder what said items are....will we be lucky enough to get a photo?

And notes are a good idea, aren't they? I should listen to my own advice on this one or I'll be writing a post like this some time!

Olivia said...

Yep, there will be another post, with pictures, about this project. Funnily enough I do have notes, just omitted the all-important needle size. It's not the first time either.

Do you know what? I really thought I was being overwhelmingly optimistic, but it actually has shrunk as it dried! I think I might get away with it after all.

Donna Lee said...

Oh, I hope it shrinks enough. It sounds like something I would do. I don't write down nearly enough things and as I get older, I forget things I am sure I would remember, like the shopping list I painstakingly wrote down Friday night and sat on the table Sat morning as I took Kate to work at 7 and headed out to shop.

m1k1 said...

The sad thing is when it was only yesterday you knitted something, and didn't write it down, because it was so obvious what you were doing, and today no matter how you look at it, you can't remember or work out how many rows between point A and point B, and you say "never again" will I be so silly, then remember that it was only last week you said that last time.

Anonymous said...

THey both fit. They're fine really. Don't sigh! One of my feet is bigger than the other. I love the lacy pattern. x