Nervous Knitting

In the Bay Area, we typically don't start getting our colder weather until after the first week of November. True to form, this week the weather turned to the 50s and 60s and we even got caught in a little downpour! It was probably the first rain we've had since April. It might not sound like a drastic change but I can definitely feel the chill in the air. Perfect time for a knit shirt. 

Pattern: based on Purl Soho's Knit T-shirt Pattern

Yarn: Brown Sheep Wildfoote Sock Yarn in Zane Grey

Cost: $40

This project didn't begin as much at all. It started in July when our state was gripped in the peak of the coronavirus. We had to make an emergency road trip down to one particularly bad area to visit my father-in-law in the hospital after a motorcycle accident and I knew I needed something for the long drive to calm my nerves. I grabbed a discarded ball of sock yarn, some long circular needles, and cast on. 

Luckily, my father in law recovered just fine. Unfortunately, the stress from the trip (and maybe the 100 degree heat) left me with hives all over my hands (luckily, it was NOT coronavirus). I thought at one point I might be allergic to the yarn, so I set the project aside for a little bit. But eventually I picked it back up. All those little stitches were very soothing - something to be productive with when everything else seemed to not be going my way. 

I kept knitting and eventually found a pattern to use with it - the Purl Soho Knit T-Shirt. In the past, I have always abandoned projects with yarn this small as overly-ambitious. But this time around I just kept knitting and knitting. 

I also realized I needed more yarn. And while I usually meticulously track all of my projects on this here blog, I had absolutely no record of the original project where this leftover yarn had come from. I had bought it in person in Santa Cruz and didn't have any of the tags. From there began an obsessive search for more. I started by looking up the brands that the yarn shop carried and then doing a Google search to see if any looked quite like this one. I eventually decided it was Brown Sheep Wildfoote Sock Yarn in Zane Grey. It matched the brown and grey tweed and was the right weight. Of course, this particular color is also out of production, so what followed was even more searching in far-flung yarn shops and eBay until I found four more balls. To conclude the saga, the balls that arrived from these different places were all different color lots - some more brown, some more gray, none of them alike. But it didn't matter. I blended them together the best I could and just kept knitting. 

I originally determined I had enough yarn to make the sleeves reach to my elbows, but I didn't like the look so I shortened them back to short sleeves. The ironic part of this project is that, while I began this project as a way to use up leftover yarn, I ended up with about the same amount leftover after I was done. Oh well. 

The yarn is probably not my first choice - it's a bit scratchy and not the most interesting color. But with a tank top underneath it's actually not bad as a fall top for some added warmth. And I am definitely motivated to try more small gauge knitting projects in the future.