Dear Kate,
I have been lurking your blog since 2004 and while you were living in France. I journeyed with you through marriage, moves and children. You are the high priestess of the Clapotis, Sunrise Circle Jacket, Union Square Market, Peapod, Marina Piccola (I've knit this one), and my nemesis, Arwen. Clapotis has 5000+ hearts om Rav. Your patterns are known far and wide and come in such a wide variety; socks, tops, shawls, mittens, baby togs. The list goes on and on. Your patterns were some of the first that I fell in love with when I discovered knitting in the blogosphere.
All I ever wanted was to knit Arwen. I remember buying and downloading the pattern, searching for just the right color of the Debbie Bliss Cashmerino Aran and investing in Addi Turbos, to allow the stitches to fly off the needles.
I swatched for the first time in my life! I colorcoded all the appropriate stitch numbers on the pattern with a yellow highlighter. My only concession was that I wanted to modify the hoodie and change it to a middy collar. This fifty year old woman wasn't going to wear a hoodie, not in Florida anyway. I had scoured the library for books on how to miter a cabled corner and found just the perfect instructions in a book of Viking Knitting. I remember the day that I cast on my first stitch, a sultry July Saturday morning, after having chosen just the right size and I let the knitting begin. I have a love affair with cables and the sweater was progressing well. I was even memorizing the cable pattern. I knit both sides and plodded through the garter stitch square that was the back.
I seamed and all came to an abrupt halt when I realized the sides were uneven. I frogged both sides to beyond the sleeves and reknit. Again, failure. The jacket bits landed in a dark corner while I knit other things. Months later the bag was retrieved from its dusty corner. I revisited my Arwen but I just couldn't get thing to line up. After much trepidation, I took the plunge and ripped the whole thing out. Thats right, I enlisted the help of my son and ripped while he wound the many yards of Cashmerino into semi-fresh cakes. So, there I sat with hours and hours of knitting wasted. I read the Ravelry forums and notes in the completed Arwens, those successful and not. This sweater was just not to be.
I got over my sorrow and was determined to move on! I had the Ravelry search engine smoking with every variation of cardigan and sweater in Cashmerino Aran, searching, searching for the dream sweater that I knew this yarn could become.
After what seemed like hours and hundreds of sweater patterns later, despondency set in. Was there no sweater suited to my yarn, figure, climate and knitting talents? One more search. I can't remember what combination of words or tags I used or if I searched by yarn type...but there it was the sweater of my dreams staring at me on the body of a model leaning against a barren tree, sleeves that were much to long for her arms. Wisteria! Just the name was magic and those cables, wild and unpredictable. Sure, the sleeves could be shortened. This was it, the sweater that would be my knitting destiny. Then I glanced the designers name, it was you, Kate. I hesitated, just for a moment. I broke down, giving a sweater design of yours a second chance and bought the pattern that will consume me for the next few months. I cast on and have (hopefully) successfully completed the yoke. Did I mentioned that I love the cables? Please, wish me luck. While I will never knit a Clapotis, your other sweaters are in my queue-. Should I fail, I going over to Nora Gaughan!
All is fair in love and knitting.
