Not Meant To Be

Sometimes, no matter how badly you think you want something, you just can't have it. Case in point.

This was an infinity scarf. It made it's first appearance here.  It's the one that's still on the needles.  The one that never got a post with details. Maybe I didn't actually love it as much as I thought I did, and it didn't get a post because it didn't get finished in time for the craft market, and so was set aside for other, more intriguing projects. 

I note that it was one of those projects I started while blogging was falling apart.  When I picked it up again in the Spring, I no longer had any idea what the pattern was. I remembered knitting from a sheet of printer paper, which argued it might have been a PDF stored on my computer somewhere.  It wasn't.  It might then have been something stored in my Ravelry Library.  It wasn't.  A prolonged and protracted search on Ravelry revealed it as a free pattern. I printed it off (again).

When I brought it out to work on this Spring, I took it along as my down-time knitting during a seminar/retreat day with 7 and 8 year olds.  One of the children noticed me knitting during the lunch break, and pretty much didn't leave my side.  She wanted to know how to do it. It was the only knitting I had with me.  What was I going to say?

All I did was show her the knit stitch, trying to remember the rhyme that everyone in the world except me was taught to knit with. Something about in, around back and somebody named Jack jumping off.  She knit on my project for the remainder of the lunch period and during free moments for the rest of the afternoon.  More, she inspired that herd instinct so strong in second and third graders, emboldening two or three other children to ask to try their hands.

By the time I got the thing home, it was pretty much unsalvageable.  Stitches had been dropped down several repeats.  Yarn overs had been lost.  At one point the yarn was cut and then tied on and then cut again.  I pulled it off the needles and unraveled it down to the second or third pattern repeat and put it aside while I did some deep breathing.  I put it aside (and here's the crux of the matter), I put it aside without the needles or the printed copy of the pattern.  We all know where this is going, don't we.

I picked it up again yesterday. Now, not only do I not know what pattern it is, I have no idea what needles to use.

Sometimes, all you can do is say good-bye and start fresh somewhere else doing something else.  Sometimes, things have to end, even if you thought you loved them.

Unless I put it in my Ravelry queue?