Wednesday 13 August 2008

A ruffly hellish place.

I'm sitting here this morning unable to sleep because of a ruffle.

I've been working on a design for the shop, to feature a couple of yarns we routinely sell, and the start went brilliantly. It was kismet, it was fate. It flowed off my needles so fine and free that I knew it was just meant to be. The yarn really wanted to be one with the design.

This last bit is just anguish. Torture. It is the matter of a ruffle. After thinking long and hard about how to do it, and trying all sorts of different things, the ruffle exists and is finished. 1200 freakingly long stitches along the edge. Maybe more. Each row took an entire ball of yarn. That really should have told me something was not right. And it is wrong. So very very wrong.

A ruffle should accent and highlight. A ruffle might display a flash of delicacy. A ruffle should be an insouciant little finish, it should gild, but a ruffle should never ever take over everything in sight.


This one does. It takes over the delicacy of this knit, and just drowns the wearer in ruffles in a most alarming way. This ruffle says shut up and hear me roar. It is a standing on a soapbox, shouting in the park sort of ruffle. It is an elbowing everything else out of the way, the ruffle is going to get to the front of this line kind of ruffle.

I'll have to show it to the shop ladies first, it is after all their yarn, but I think it is wrong the way it is. I'm going to have to come up with something just a little less ruffly.

Like the Peter Principle, there ought to be a name for this principle where just when I am feeling really, really good about a thing, where just as I am about to feel my moment of triumph, where I really feel I am about to take off and fly, and then it all turns into the most amazing plop upon the floor.

Good thing I have all this patience I spoke of yesterday. I really wasn't planning on having to use this much all at once.

1 comment:

Knitting Alchemist said...

That principle lives at my house too...