It's been one of those projects.

Among other projects (like coloring in a three-by-three foot square of graph paper, and raising a small child), I've got a wrap dealie on the needles as my half of a barter with a friend. It's rather large now, about thirty inches wide and a couple feet long (she wanted large. I hear and obey.) and I was looking at it last night, and... you know... it sucks.



Sucks to the degree that I don't want to finish it and give it to someone and admit I made it. (She'll tell other people I made it and before you know it, people will be hiding from me when they see me, rather than converse with that lady who makes the nastyass wraps.) Sucks, like when people look at it I want to tell them the husbeast is knitting it and I don't know what he was thinking when he chose that yarn. (The husbeast can't knit? Surely you're joking. Elves must have done it, then. Mean, colorblind elves.)

I spent a while staring at this hideous thing under full-spectrum light, and in the end, it all comes down to sucky yarn. I like the idea, I like the pattern, the colors kinda work. But the yarn. WHAT IN HELL POSESSED ME TO BUY LION BRAND HOMESUPN??!!?? Not only is it a nightmare to work with (splits, worms, tangles, you name it), the variegation blows. It's worked itself into lameass stripes two inches wide. If I wanted stripes, I could do stripes, and they'd look a damn sight better than this does. Plus I thought the boucle effect would give the wrap some texture, and all it really does is make it look like I don't know how to knit.

My friend wanted the colors to be neutral. I never knit neutrals. I never WEAR neutrals. We're talking about a woman who regularly wears ORANGE, trying to work with neutrals. I'm a color moron when it comes to working with them. I figured if I bought a neutral vaiegated, it would do the work for me. GUESS AGAIN. Two inch stripes. Holy crap. It looks like a seventh grade Home Ec project. (Not that there's anything WRONG with seventh grade home ec projects, but I have not worked at learning knitting for twenty freakin' years to turn out stuff this amatureish.)

The new plan: I've got some cream colored Nature Spun worsted (...somewhere... Finding it is another problem I don't care to contemplate at just this moment, thank you), and if I buy a couple skeins of a light brown NS worsted, and spatter dye it with a darker brown, maybe some coral and pink, I'd get my random colors that I could then combine with the beige. This would work. And I'd get dying practice in. (Yes, that's right, I'm trying to fix a project by doing something I've never tried before. Tell me YOU've never done that.)

So today I ask my friend (who is trading me a painting for the wrap) if she's ever gotten about halfway done with a painting, hated it, and started over. My life will be much easier if she says yes.