And then? I did something I've never done before.

I ripped the whole damn thing out.

Yep that's right. It was only a little sweater, no sleeves even, and it looked just awful on me so I decided to spare myself the emotional trauma of shoving it into the bottom of a drawer and feeling disappointed every time I came across it for the next 25 years.

I started this top last year. It's the very popular Coachella by Fathom Harvill, as seen on Knitty. (wow - 411 peeps making this on Ravelry!) I was looking for a little summer shell, so I decided to give this cute top a whirl. The yarn is Blue Heron in Old Gold.

Last summer I set to work and whipped up about 80 percent of this sweater, then didn't pick it up again till a couple of weeks ago. Thanks to a recent ghastly six-hour airport delay and a few days in the country, I finished it!

Friends, I will spare you the experience of seeing me model this garment, because it ain't pretty. Let's just say it clung to me in all the wrong places. [It should be noted that the 411 people making this sweater on Ravelry are of all body types - and they all look amazing. I think I just made the wrong size for me.]

A cute design to be sure, but it just didn't work on me. And how interesting is that construction? It's just a tube with holes for the arms, and then with the way it drapes on the body, it magically becomes a t-back cowl. Maybe if I had left out some of the waist shaping, I would have gotten a better fit for my middle. I could have tried to rework it, but for once I decided to just LET IT GO.

So, I was ruthless, and as my mother watched on with gleeful horror, I frogged that bad boy.

Then I was left with some seriously kinked been-knitted-for-a-year yarn.


HOW TO: get the kink out

Did you know that if you unravel long-knitted yarn, you should de-kink it before reknitting it? If you don't, your gauge will be all wack and other terrible things will happen. Really.

So I bundled it up into nice hanks...




... and gave it a soak in the same green Tupperware bowl my mom has had for my entire life. I let it soak for 15 minutes or so, while I sat back and enjoyed the soothing country setting...

My parents built this pretty staircase and retaining wall from the foundation stones of an old one-room schoolhouse that was once on their property. My grandmother and her four sisters actually attended this school, I guess back in the thirties. How cool is that? And how much does my mom's garden kick butt?

This little yellow boy is the cutest.

And this is my dad's garlic crop from this year. Impressive, right? He is becoming quite the gardener and has a serious crop of peaches, plums, grapes, apples and all manner of vegetables. And oh the tomatoes!


And this is Toadie, who lives in a little dugout in the flower garden. Seriously, he's there 24-7.

So after the yarn soaked for a while, I hung it to dry. The weight of the wet yarn pulled itself straight again, so that it could be restored to its original non-kinky state.

All rolled back into a neat ball, good as new, and all that bad clinginess a distant memory. Kind of a bummer, but also kind of liberating to just totally undo something that didn't work, rather than letting it hang on and suffer. As my mom said, it was a good sweater gone bad. Oh well.