You know that shopping experience where you see a dress on the hanger and think, “Wow! That’s a stunner!” Then, when you get it on in the dressing room, it’s all wrong? That flowing top is just boxy and makes you look fat, or the waist is so unflattering you feel like a bowling ball wrapped in a curtain, or any number of unexpected flaws?
Or, it’s the opposite. You grab a plain looking frock just because the color intrigues you, only to discover that it fits with elegant style and gorgeous drape. If find this most often to be true of dresses and bathing suits, but I bet all of you have stories of a similar kind. Things aren't always what they seem.
It’s true of this scarf...only I can’t decide if it’s good or bad. It’s just totally different than what I’d imagined. In the pattern’s defense, I had no finished photo, so my brain concocted an image as construction went along. Still, I find the yarn behaves completely differently off the needles. What I thought was going to be a fluffy swath of ribbing--something for warmth, is in reality a sleek accessory. Off the circular needles, the thing stretched out to a long thin near-tube within seconds. The curl at each side of the scarf is gone, hidden by the piece’s tendency to curve in on itself.
Now that I think it over, how else would a diagonal ribbed scarf behave? It makes sense. And it’s not at all unattractive. It’s just so different. You can’t see many of the things I liked about it, but other things have emerged that are just as intriguing. I don’t not like it, I’m just stunned by the off-needle transformation. And I don't know where to file the surprise. Good? Bad? Just surprising?
After a few wears in its current state, I’m going to wash and block it to see if it changes again. That’s the marvelous mystery of knitting...you never know what you’re going to get!
Even when you think you’ve already gotten it!
Before we travel on to our final North Shore project, we get to fun detours next week:
1) The annual Click Thru Happy Birthday Tour of best posts from 2011, and
2) our first-ever Knitting Authors Profile, where you'll meet a published author who's also a knitter and hear about how she balances her keyboards and needles
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