There is a category on this blog marked Current Obsession. It is there for a reason. Generally my current obsession is either worked off in library books, or in handwork – the DPN/hook case, for example, or the Dishonour Cow. (Sometimes it is worked off in books about handwork.)
Frequently, however, the more hands-on obsessions are unwise to pursue, or at the very least imprudent, and this is why I use the Caped Gooseberry as a Sensible Sounding Board, because he doesn’t fall under the enchantment that the putative project projects on to me (or that the putative projects project on to me, if plural).
On the other hand, I can be very persuasive when in the grip of an obsession.
In the recent heatwave, when it was too hot to knit, I was fretchetting about, needing something to do with my hands.
The wily and experienced among you will notice that there was no mention of gauge in this process; nor was there any mention of ensuring correlation between a) pattern, b) yarn, and c) hook. People frequently size the pattern up or down by adding extra rows; it would be fine with whatever came to hand, surely? I didn’t want a big slouchy thing hanging on my neck, so I could chop out a few rows.
I carefully collated notes on which rows people omitted, and having reached the Point of Decision found that the thing was far too small. I ended up doing the whole pattern – ring after ring of interlocking chain stitches – and then made a casing and threaded it with fine elastic.
It was too small.
Not the casing; no, the casing was fine. It was the whole thing that was too small. It was basically a skull cap, a creamy lace skull cap. I left it for a couple of weeks, and then decided to frog it, as knitters say (rip-it! rip-it!) and return it to something approaching its original form.
But… I’d sewn in the ends. I don’t enjoy sewing in ends, so I generally try to make sure that I will never have to sew this end in again. I couldn’t even find the end, so short of taking the scissors to the thing, frogging will not be an option.
May I therefore present to you: the Doily of Gauge Regret.
It could use some washing, some blocking, some pressing, aaaand a whole new life in someone else’s house.
Incidentally, for those of you who were wondering, the reason circular scarves are sometimes called snoods – even though they bear them no resemblance – is because food-workers’ hairnets used to be called snoods, and the circular scarfy thing used to keep beard hair out of food came to be called a beard snood.
That is not to say that only a hairnetty thing can rightfully be called a snood. No, no. A snood can also be a piece of fishing gear or a fleshy protuberance, excrescence, or caruncule hanging off the face of a turkey (and it’s probably only a matter of time before a pattern for that shows up on Ravelry).
