2008-01-28

So it was with a great pit in my stomach that I've realized I have not one, but two major ripping projects on my to do list.

I was so excited this weekend, to have finished all 16 blocks of the snail's trail quilt I'm making for my college roommate's third baby. I laid them all out in the living room, but they didn't look right. After lots of hmmmms I realized that yes in deed, I am stupid. You see Snail's trail is a block that requires your darks and lights to be in specific places. I had just been sewing along with them opposite each other. And I can tell you with great certainty now, that there are a wide variety of block formations that can arise from this higgly piggly sewing technique. In fact, only 1/4 of the blocks (well a bit over) were actually correct. That's right--I had 5 out of 6 that were correct. I had 11! that were not. Of those though, four were easily corrected, as I had only misplaced the outer triangles. Three of them go two levels of triangles down and the other four were completely inverted. Pretty, but wrong. So Saturday night, when I had been thinking that perhaps I could mail this quilt off early and give poor T a much needed morale boost (this has been a hard pregnancy on her), I find that I'll spend a great deal of time "unsewing" as MIL calls it.

I have already tackled the easy blocks to give myself a boost--because now I can say--over half are done! (9 of 16). Then I decided to tackle the four that needed to be completely ripped apart. I have one done, and resewed (10 of 16). I have one block partially ripped up, and another completely ripped up.
MIL tried to talk me out of ripping, and if I hadn't showed T my flickr page, you could see exactly why that would look OK, but not like a snails trail. She's sweet, but I know if she was in my shoes she'd rip. Although, I think if this happened to her, she'd actually do this instead--she'd make 11 new snails trail blocks--perhaps only ripping the easily fixed ones--so maybe actually making the 7 new blocks. Then she'd make another 9 blocks in the backasswards pattern that resulted from being careless and put those together. I don't have the time or the fabric stash to pull that off. But then she'd have the two baby quilts together lickity split. And I have to wrangle two 4 11/12 year olds (another post for another day--how may babies are growing up!)

One would think that in these times of unsewing and ripping (ripping is so violent sounding) that knitting would be my solace. And one would think that with the stuffed toys I've taken on as big sibling gifts that it would be easy to lose myself in the knitting. And it would, had I not come to this awful realization today: the purple sweater must be frogged.
Life is just too short, knitting is just too time consuming to be wearing ill-fitting sweaters. This sweater has never fit me right and I will never wear it as it is. I think this is in part to the yarn type--this cotton modal blend is very drapey and the style--drop shoulder sweater. I actually feel a bit relieved at this, but also a little upset at having knit a whole sweater only to hate it. I could probably salvage some of the back, and perhaps a bit of the sleeves, if I decide its destiny before ripping. I was thinking cardigan this time. I also have a bit extra in that yarn (although not washed several times, so probably looks a bit different now) so theoretically, I could make something that took more yarn. We'll see.

I need to end this, but I wanted to leave you with my new mantra: Embrace the rip.

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