Saturday, June 29, 2013

Can This Sweater be Saved?

It's pretty obvious that I've been terribly neglectful of Afghans for Afghans.  The Princess sends off socks and mittens and hats and I  - watch.  This latest campaign, the one for sweaters for schoolgirls finally got me engaged again.  For one thing, I love sweaters.  A child's sweater, I figured, would be a piece of cake.  The a4A website asked, "Shouldn't all school girls have a new, beautiful wool sweater to wear to class? Yes! Yes! Yes!" and I knew I was in. 

The trick was finding a yarn that would make the sweater pretty.  The Princess and I have absolutely committed to knitting from stash until the yarn we have can be contained in the space we have.  I had no idea I had bought so many variations on dark until I went stash-diving for pretty.  Dream in Color Classy in Black Parade and Gothic Rose. Dream in Color Knitosophy in Superhero.  Fleece Artist Blue Faced Leicester in Raven.  Sunshine Yarns Merino Silk Fine in Black Truffle.  There's Sweet Georgia Superwash in Nightshade. Madelintosh Vintage in Ink.  My collection of sweater quantities of Cascade 220 -- my absolute favorite workhorse yarn for sweaters -- is comprised almost entirely of dark blues and browns.  What isn't is dark red or greyish green or sickly tarnished gold. I have only an odd skein here and there of soft, pretty colors.  So I went with the dark red. I reasoned it was less dismal than the others.  That, and I like red.

I cast on for Knitting Pure and Simple's basic Neck-down Child's pullover, figuring I 'd power through it in no time. I had most of the body knit when I pulled it out to show a fellow knitter.  It was the just-a-little-too-long pause followed by a comment that suggested she thought it would work for a boy that brought me up short and made me take a good look at what I had. She was right.  There was no way this could be called a pretty sweater.  Striping the waistband turned out just ugly. It seems most soft, pretty colors fight with this red.  What to do, what to do?  Something to the bottom hem and cuffs, since any other alternative would involve ripping out the whole sweater.

I hauled out Nicky Epstein's Knitting On the Edge and Knitting Beyond the Edge. I swatched.


Surely one of these will work?