Off to a good start

Eight or ten years ago I bought several skeins of a chunky Katia yarn on sale. I soon knitted it up into my first-ever lace pattern, in two pieces, the idea being to join them together into a shawl.

The twain finally about to meet

And there the project ended. I baulked at the grafting, and also it looked horrid on me. Big chunky knits; always so flattering on a hefty lass! So into a drawer it went until recently, when I dragged it out – and discovered that it was exactly the same pattern as a scarf I started a couple of months ago (and have since finished), and which also required grafting. Groundhog Day! I had no recollection of ever having attempted that stitch before. My mind has canyons into which all sorts of things slip.

Slightly wonky, but done!

My first attempts at grafting this hit various snags, but in the meantime I successfully grafted the grey scarf. On Sunday I went back to the cream project and nailed it. I realised a few centimetres in that I was somehow twisting the stitches, but I didn’t go back and fix them. The UPP is about finishing things, not making them perfect. A penchant for perfection does few people any favours.


The grafting isn’t perfect but it does what grafting should: it joins two pieces together and doesn’t look too obvious. I call this finished. It doesn’t work as a shawl for me but it can dress the bed and warm my feet, and it was a satisfying way to spend a couple of hours on a sunny winter’s day.

One project down, an astronomical number still to go.

And then I could justify spending the rest of the afternoon sitting on the balcony reading the new Tana French novel.