The Sophie Hood Saga – Part 3

In which everything unravels, and then everything is fine.

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If you have been following this story, you will know that it began in New Zealand with two skeins of lime green MYak, escalated through two additional yarn purchases, and resulted in what I have been calling the most expensive Sophie Hood in the history of mankind.

What I did not know, when I wrote that, was that the story was not finished.

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A Quick Recap

Three yarns held together — MYak Tibetan Fibres in Appletini, Cascade Yarns Alpaca Lace, and a Suri Alpaca Mulberry Silk blend from Knotty Habit. A combined fibre content that has no business being used for a single garment and yet here we are.

The Sophie Hood by PetiteKnit comes in three sizes. The sizes differ not in the hood itself but in the length of the attached scarf. Large has the longest scarf. I knitted the large size first, for myself, and used just over half the yarn doing so.

Enough remained for a second hood. I intended it as a gift for a very dear friend.

I cast on the small size.

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Twenty Centimetres From the End

Everything was going beautifully until it wasn’t.

Twenty centimetres from completion on the second hood, I ran out of yarn.

Not almost out. Out.

The only yarn remaining was in the first hood, currently finished and sitting there looking smug about it.

The decision was straightforward, if slightly painful: frog the first one, use the reclaimed yarn to finish the second, and then reknit the first in the small size as well. The large size had used more yarn than I could spare. Small it would be, for both of them.

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The Frogging

Now, frogging three strands of held-together luxury yarn has a particular quality to it. Unravelling it ball by ball would have taken considerable time and considerable patience, neither of which I had in abundance at that moment.

So I did something that I can only describe as a live transfer.

I undid the cast off of the finished hood and knitted directly from the yarn being frogged straight onto the needles of the unfinished one. No balling. No winding. Just one project being slowly dismantled while another was simultaneously completed, connected by three strands of running yarn.

It looked absolutely deranged. I have a photo. It is one of my favourite knitting photos I have ever taken.

The second hood was finished. It was beautiful. Bright lime green, beautifully soft, the Suri Alpaca halo catching the light in that particular way it has.

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The Response

My friend, to her enormous credit, was honest with me.

Bright lime green is not her colour. She does not wear hoods or hats of any description. She thanked me genuinely and told me the truth, which I appreciated far more than I would have appreciated a hood buried in a drawer and quietly never worn.

I offered it to my daughters.

Neither of them could see their way into wearing their mother’s bright lime green Sophie Hood either.

I love bright colours. My children are pastel people. This is one of life’s gentle ongoing disagreements and I have made my peace with it.

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What Happened Next

My husband, watching all of this unfold, asked if I could make him a crocheted beanie. He liked the colour. Clearly this man has excellent taste. After all, he married me!

Reader, I did not even wind the yarn.

The frog-a-row, work-a-row method continued. I crocheted him a beanie directly from the remains of the project, live, in real time, without so much as forming a ball first. When the beanie was finished there was still yarn remaining — a respectable amount, as it turned out.

So I knitted myself a cowl.

A generous cowl. Long enough to pull up over the head if the weather demands it. I used every remaining gram of yarn, because wasting a single centimetre of this particular combination was simply not something I was willing to do.

It came out fabulous. I am not being modest. It is genuinely fabulous.

On a sidenote, a straight up cowl like this in stocking stitch, is my favourite knitting for a road trip. Round and round without having to think while watching the scenery pass by. Pure knitting bliss.

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The Final Accounting

Three yarns. One purchase in New Zealand, two ordered locally to make the whole thing work.

From all of that yarn, in the end:

One small Sophie Hood for those days when I want to feel more fabulous than I would wearing a beanie. One crocheted beanie — on my husband’s head, where it belongs. One cowl — on my person, where it also belongs.

The most expensive Sophie Hood in the history of mankind did not end as a Sophie Hood at all. It ended as three things, which is arguably better value than one thing, even if that was not the original plan.

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A Note on Honesty

I want to say something about my friend’s response, because I think it matters.

She could have accepted the hood and said thank you and meant it. I would never have known. Instead she told me the truth — gently, kindly, but clearly — and in doing so she gave me back the yarn to do something better with.

A handmade gift that sits in a drawer is not a gift. It is just an object that someone feels guilty about not using. Honesty is kinder than politeness in this particular situation, and I am grateful for it.

Knit for people who will wear it. And if they will not, knit it into something else.

The yarn always finds its way.

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This is the third and final chapter of the Sophie Hood story. The pattern is by PetiteKnit. The yarn situation was entirely my own doing.