The other day I was browsing through my UFO knitting projects trying to figure out if there was something easy that I could work on and possibly finish. Well, that thought right there is laughable. EASY?? I think so many UFO’s become UFO’s because the project became difficult to finish and that’s why it was abandoned.
I thought I might try to finish a simple poncho that I had started over 10 years ago so I pulled it off the stack. To my dismay, I found it had been visited by a moth that had eaten away a small portion about 2 inches from the start as well as snacking on some of the yarn in the ball. Back into the bag the poncho went while I decided my next steps. I forgot to take a photo of the damage done. I was quite sad. I’ve lived in my house over 30 years and have never seen any moth holes until now.
(Here is a photo of a moth visit in another UFO that I found later…) Look familiar to anyone??
More about this UFO at the end of this blogpost.
I thought about how to proceed for a couple more days. Finally, I decided to rip out the first two inches of the poncho to get to the other side of the hole and to knit another two inches onto the other end. Fortunately, I had plenty of yarn left. Ripping out the first two inches was not as easy as I thought it should be. The edges were all twisted and that made it really difficult to rip back. And there were places where I had split the yarn and had to actually cut the yarn to remove it. I was really questioning my knitting skills at this point when I looked at the fabric I had created. Wow, I did such an awful job on a simple stockinette stitch on a plain rectangle!
After beating myself up for doing such a poor knitting job, I finally remembered that I had started this simple project so I could learn a new edge stitch as well as learn how to do pick knitting (Continental) versus throw knitting (English). And I have to say that I failed at both new learnings. I would forget that I did the edge stitch and revert back to just heading back the other way when I turned my work. And my pick stitching and tension are horrendous. It looks like I finally just went back to throwing my stitches and was still hit or miss on that edge stitch.
I get good tension when I throw my yarn. So, part of the poncho looked good and part looked like I should have just ripped it out and started over.
My next thought was maybe I could block out all the imperfections. I think the yarn is a Super Wash wool, although I don’t really know since I didn’t have any labels for it. Where do those labels always disappear to? Blocking the wet poncho out into the correct dimensions was very challenging, but happily I finally had some success with that. It measures 22” x 50”.
As it dried, many of the flaw’s kind of worked themselves out. You have to love wool for its ability to do that.
Here is the finished poncho. I’m quite happy with it. Just a plain everyday type poncho.
When I was a teenager, my Mom knit a poncho for me and I wore it all the time. I loved it. I have no idea what happened to it. One day I decided to find a pattern similar to it and try to make something in its likeness. I think it is a superwash wool too. I may have blogged about this poncho before, but here is a photo of it again. It makes me smile.
I should probably go look at it closer and make sure the moths haven’t been visiting it along with all my other wool pieces. Think I’ll stick it into a plastic bag and then into the freezer for a day or two.
The first photo of the moth hole is one of two I found in a crocheted cardigan that I am trying to finish up. I don’t crochet as much as I knit so I’ve had some new learnings on this project and I see why it became a UFO. It will also be a bit more challenging to repair those holes as I can’t rip things out like I did with the poncho. The hole in the front is by that yellow clip on the bottom right side. The other is on the back. Definitely some mending in my future before I can wear this cardigan. Hopefully sooner rather than later as it is a lovely weight for this time of year. And yes I do love blue!
That’s my journey for now.
Hope you are all enjoying the arrival of Spring!
Tesi Vaara