The Death of a Lovely Sweater

It has happened to us all. That prized possession gets ruined and you are heartbroken for days - no weeks - NO MONTHS! It's a horrible feeling. It's hard to recover.

Let me back up a bit.

The picture with this blog post is the last known evidence of me (middle) in my beloved sweater. This is a knitted sweater that I picked up on my travels to Italy last May. I LOVED THIS SWEATER. She went everywhere with me. I always took care to ensure she was hand-washed and laid flat to dry. The cats were not allowed in the house while she dried. She was snuggly and warm and I could pull up the large collar over my head if I was caught in the rain. She was light enough for travel but warm enough that I didn't freeze on the airplane.

Do you understand the relationship here?

Okay, fast forward a few months to the period of time in March/April between schools getting closed and not yet being ready to deliver classes online. Trying to be a good mom (and keep my kids out of my hair) I decided it was time to learn some new life skills, such as laundry.

Do I need to go any further here? Did I just hear you groan with me? You understand. You've been there.

My stomach is upset remembering this day.

There was a period of denial when I tried to convince myself that I could still wear her. The texture from the lovely knitted stitches were gone, the collar was smaller, and, well, the entire thing was SEVERAL sizes smaller, but I was determined. I tried blocking her back out to normal shape with a whole lot of tugging and pulling. I thought maybe losing a few pounds would help. I tried to convince myself that a waist coat with 3/4 sleeves with a whole lot of flare looked good. Yeah, that would work!

It didn't.

I finally put my big girl pants on and did two things. 

1. Most importantly, I contacted the shop in Italy and ordered a replacement. They did not have the exact same dark gray color, but they had the silver gray color that I almost picked originally. I love her just as much as the original and we are getting along happily.

2. I decided that I was not quite yet ready to say goodbye to the original, so I wrapped her up in tissue and stored her for another day. 

Fast forward to today and I *THINK* I finally know what I want to do with her. I'm playing with some ideas and will start to share those over the coming week.

I just keep telling myself to "craft joy" on this one.

Caré