Today's topic is a past knitting project, and I'm going to write about a total failure - a project that was never finished and in fact can't be finished.
Some time before I stopped knitting for 25 years, back in the early 80s, I started work on a Patricia Roberts pattern. I think it was a cardigan. The yarn was from her own shop in London - black wool, white and gold mohair, in 4-ply (fingering) weight. As you can see from the photo, the pattern is wonderfully complicated. So why didn't I finish it? One reason is that the design doesn't quite work - at the point where the cables of white and gold mohair approach each other and then diverge, they pull a gap in the background fabric (which is all reverse stocking stitch, by the way). Maybe that's due to my incompetent knitting, of course.
Another reason is that it's tiny. I cannot believe that I made the whole back of the cardigan without realising that it was never going to fit - it's only about 14 inches wide. I assume that I did a tension swatch, but possibly the tension was given over stocking stitch, and the mohair cables pulled the fabric in more than expected. I don't know.
And another reason why I now can't finish it, even if I felt inclined to start again, is that I can't find the pattern. It isn't with the piece I have finished, or with the rest of the yarn. I have several Patricia Roberts knitting books and it's not there. What's more, I can't find it in any of the Patricia Roberts books in the Knitting and Crochet Guild Library. I think it might have been in a magazine, but I have no idea which one.
So there you are - a totally failed project.
