I brought a mix of yarn from the US to Germany – different colors and weights, and also a mix of yarns with a specific pattern in mind and others with just a general idea of what I might do.
Take the yarns above – I was pretty sure I’d so some sort of hat for myself or maybe a bit of a cowl with the two ply on the left and that I’d do baby things for AwesomeE’s tyke with the soft and fluffy white 3ply handspun. Both needed to be something special.
The first yarn is Stonehedge mill ends plied together which I bought in Petoskey Michigan. I was picking up a skein to make something for somebody else and my husband encouraged me to get a skein for myself (he’s not “TheEnabler” for nothing) to make myself something because I’d been doing lots of things for other people. The handspun was one of my first successful attempts to spin up a 3ply in anything less than an Aran weight and a bit of the plying was done by AwesomeE and her little cousin.
As I’ve noted earlier – it turns out that making baby things isn’t my favorite thing to do. And doing it in white it appears holds even less charm for me. So the white 3ply did not become baby things. And I never got around to doing anything with the Stonehedge yarn either. I just never found the right thing.
This past fall, one of our friends has been admiring my husbands’ scarves and cowls I’ve made. My husband would come home from work and say “X” admired my cowl again!” He has also expressed curiosity when we’re out together and I have my spinning or knitting along. So, he seemed like a good candidate for a hand knit of scarf or cowl. I have a sense of his style – dark outer clothing, but lighter more colorful accessories. Bulkier, not drapey, scarves. He likes hiking and the outdoors, so I decided a cowl would be good – it’s nice not to fight blowing ends of a scarf.
Ok – so I know what I’m going for. Do I have yarn in stash or do I need to buy some? Looking over my walls and checking what’s in the closet, I realized the yarns above fit the bill when combined together. Since they are similar weights, but have some key differences (2pl vs 3ply, even vs my thick & thin, barber pole with long color changes vs natural white), they would also give me the complex textured effect I had in mind.
But…. should I use these special yarns, one which was meant to be for something for me and the other which somehow I’d tagged in my mind for AwesomeE? Gifts for somebody I haven’t knitted for before are always a little extra fraught – will they appreciate it? Use it? Care for it properly? I’ve written previously on trying to sort out when to give people hand made items but this was a new dilemma. I had no doubts about the item or time investment or recipient. It was just the yarn!
Then I realized that I was making the question far too hard. I hadn’t done anything with the Stonehedge yarn, and well, no cute little white baby sweaters had materialized. I’d decided these yarns were special but when I looked at them they didn’t actually feel that special – not anymore than most of my yarn does anyway. If I kept trying to save them for the “right” thing, it would never materialize anymore than handknit baby sweaters do because I would be looking for the wrong project. I actually had the right project idea right in front of me. When I showed the two yarns together to my husband, he thought they were perfect* which settled it. This was a reminder to me to stop and reflect what I think a yarn is “too special” for a project – is it really that special? If the yarn otherwise suits the project, why isn’t this project good enough?
The intended recipient received his cowl on Friday and loves it. He asked if it was ok that he plans to wear it, and of course I said “yes, that’s what it’s for.” He was intrigued by the different stitches in it’s construction, touched that some of it’s handspun, and plans on taking it on his next big hiking trip.
p.s. If I wrote up the pattern to share, would anybody be interested? Let me know in the comments.
*and he clearly had zero memory that one skein was supposed to be for something for me