Decay

The first sweater I ever made was a disaster. I followed a pattern that I'd found in Elle Magazine (a hundred years ago; do they even still do knitting patterns?), and I followed it precisely and accurately. It was kind of a modern fisherman's sweater - knit in a lanolin rich unbleached white wool, but without cables and pompons. Instead it was mostly seed stitch, in a big V, with plain knit below, and rolled edges at the neck and hem.

The problem was the seed stitch - it had way too much give in it. The give, coupled with the weight of the wool, meant that the sweater looked like an enormous potato sack on, and so I never actually wore it. I thought about it a lot; after all, I'd put a lot of time into it, not to mention yarn. I thought about intentionally shrinking it, I thought about reinforcing the shoulder seams with twill tape to combat the sag.

Eventually, the sweater ended up at my mother's house - where everything in need of alteration would go. Every once in a while, I idly wondered to myself about its whereabouts - thinking perhaps I'd rip it out and make something else - and then I'd promptly forgot about it again.

On Saturday, I found the sweater.



I have never been so horrified in my life. Dirty stinking rotten moths.

I've seen moth damage before, but usually a pin hole here or a nibble there. These moths ate great swaths of knitting - holes from the front ALL THE WAY THROUGH to the back.

This, people, is not the kind of decay that is inadvertently lovely or whimsically elegiac. This makes me heartsick.

Damned moths.