There was a moment last weekend when, sitting at my knitting table, I realized I had only two projects on needles. Worse yet, I had nothing in the wings – no gauge swatches tacked to patterns, no yarn wound into nice little cakes.
A quick trip to my sewing table was as shocking – nothing in the works. No fabric pre-washed, no pattern pieces neatly set aside.
How had I gotten so project-less?
The holiday season definitely played a role in this, as did the bout of something that resembled Covid but wouldn’t admit that it was. I had also wrapped up three projects in one week – projects that needed minimal work to get across the finish line. Did I bask in the finished object glory a bit too long? Yes, I did and I have no shame.
As the wind howled and the rain lashed the windows, I burrowed into my yarn stash in search of the brightest, liveliest skeins I could find. I ended up with three skeins of Dundaga 6/1 fingering, a rustic woollen yarn produced at Pāces vilnas fabrika in Latvia. These were purchased at Strick-und-Glueck, a small yarn shop near St. Micheal’s Church in Hamburg, Germany. Charming shop, very charming owner and well worth the stop.
This yarn is rustic, and it’s bright. A lively sunflower yellow. And I have 1350m, so enough for a cardigan or pullover. That was my starting point.
My search took me through Ravelry, through the projects I have saved on Instagram, through my downloaded patterns, through all my magazines and books. Hours later I landed on the “Yellow Gold Pullover” by Linda Marveng, published in the fall 2015 edition of Interweave Knits. It’s an exquisite pullover, knit in pieces from the bottom up, with a panel of cables in the front and back and on the sleeves. The colour is summer itself, and I could see myself wearing it while hiking in the Rocky Mountains, or simply walking my dogs down Talbot Street.
I never start a project without proper swatching. I may not know much about the yarn, but a swatch will tell me loads. While winding the skein into a cake it became clear that this single ply yarn is pretty fragile — several times it just split apart off the swift and I had to start another cake. Already I began to doubt that it would be strong enough for cables.
The pattern calls for two swatches, a welt pattern and a cable pattern. The welt swatch knit up well enough, although the yarn did break in the middle of a purl stitch. The cable swatch was more of a challenge. Yes, the yarn did break. I also struggled with the cross chain link cable – so many opportunities for dropped stitches!
Three days into this swatching journey I began to reconsider my choice. Clearly, if it takes days to get through a swatch, there’s a relationship problem. Either the yarn isn’t right for the project, or the project isn’t right for the maker. So the swatch was frogged.
Nothing was lost in the process – I found a project that will stay in my queue, and I have a better appreciation of my Latvian yarn.
I also have fabric ready to go on my sewing table. More of that later.
Check out Linda Marveng’s patterns on Ravelry at https://www.ravelry.com/designers/linda-marveng or at lindamarveng.com