You're Never too Old to Learn a Lesson

A couple of days ago I was rooting through my freezer for something to defrost for yesterday's lunch. I fancied some soup and after looking for a little while found what I was sure was a little container full of yummy miso soup with mushrooms and sweetcorn.

So, yesterday, at lunchtime I was all set to eat said soup (with the addition of some fresh beansprouts - yum). Well. Except what I thought was the lovely miso soup was actually some kind of vegetable and unrecognisable meat stew combo. Really not what I was expecting.

I bet you're wondering why I'm telling you this, aren't you?
Well, I did somewhat the same thing with a UFO a little while ago. 'Yes', I thought, having stashed away this particular cardigan for a year because I found more new and exciting things to knit, 'this cardi is just the thing and I have lots of the yarn left, so let's get on with it.'

That bit there, the 'I have lots of the yarn left' part... well, I had lots of yarn left that looked like the same yarn. In the semi-darkness. While I was watching TV and not paying a huge amount of attention.

Image copyright, Ingrid Murnane

You can't see it so well from this picture, but the bottom half and part of the arms are a rather different shade of red. Not just a different dyelot, but an entirely different colourway. To add insult to injury, I realised that I'd knitted another cardigan for my Mum in the yarn left from this one, instead of the newer, differently-shaded yarn that I had bought especially for it. The upshot of it was that my red cardigan was frogged.

This is the point where you say, '...but Ingrid, you seem like a quite well organised person. Don't you keep a little notebook with all the details of each project, or do the same on Ravelry?' Er, well I do now! Quite obviously I didn't before, but the Red Cardigan of Doom has taught me a lesson. It is one that I'll be extending to my cooking life as well now.

Without sounding like a public information advert, if this is a problem that you have yourself, Ravelry has great options on their project pages to add in the yarn and needles you are using and even the shade and dyelot. Brenda Dayne also gave some great advice on how she keeps record cards for each project she makes a while back on Cast On (I'm really sorry that I can't find the actual episode).

Another extra, but really useful thing that you could do alongside keeping 'real life' notes in a book or card system is to keep some of the yarn that you used for mending. Even better (and to follow a wartime tradition) you could make the buttons for your garment by knitting them and stuffing them with the yarn, so there is always some available and it will have been washed to the same extent.*

So, after the fiasco of the miso soup and the frogging of the Red Cardigan of Doom, the moral of the story is: keep proper records of your stuff, people: you won't regret it!

Ingrid x

*Thanks to Jane Waller and Susan Crawford for that great advice!

PS I ended up having a marmite sandwich and a banana, if you were wondering.