I should have known better, really.
I spent the better part of Monday at home alone (like much of the country, taking off the day before Australia for a blissful four-day weekend!) and after working away on a secret knitting project in the morning, I treated myself to starting something new in the afternoon. I wasn’t going to. I had decided to Be Good but I had a little conversation with myself about how I really hadn’t started anything major in the lace department for a while, and how A Long Lacy Summer is whooshing by with just one shawl to show for it so far. And so on.
I even heard RoseRed’s voice in my head agreeing with me. She’s such an enabler. I knew she would want me to treat myself to something new and exciting and so I did it. I took the cone of Colormart cashmere that’s been taunting me for some weeks and, with wild abandon, began to work on the glorious Cap Shawl from Victorian Lace Today. Recently I tried to cast on another circular shawl and had no luck. I find the circular beginning challenging but with the help of some tutorials online, I magically figured it out and was on my way.
I was flying! You know that feeling when it all comes together and you’re just so happy that it’s finally working? Well, it’s all come to nought. It was a brief, but meaningful affair. Last night, the Cap Shawl died. It wasn’t even twenty-four hours old.
I did actually get further than this. I got about sixteen rounds in. It wasn’t hard. It was just fiddly, being so small. Then it all went wrong.
Ever worked with cobwebby cashmere? No? Let me give you a hint, if you ever do (take heed Donna Lee!). It breaks. Easily. Don’t tug it. Don’t wrench it from the cone. Don’t drag on it. Treat it like it’s the finest dewy spider web hanging in the garden. At some point, one of the stitches a row below the one I was on just broke. I looked closely to see that it had a weak spot in it and with the merest touch it simply broke apart. I tried a few things to fix it but it was no good, because in the process of doing so, more yarn broke. And it was all over.
I am hereby putting RoseRed’s generous gift of so much cashmere away for a little while. We’ve had a troubled relationship and I think the time just isn’t right. There’s a little voice in the back of my head saying ‘see, that’s what you get for being greedy. You’ve got enough on the go. You didn’t need a cap shawl right now.’
At least, I console myself, I didn’t get up to row 135 before I had to rip it out like Donna from Random Knits did. Did you see? Heartbreaking. Small consolation really.
Bells
