abled Grey (nee Skein)—A mostly finished sweater and long-time yarn resident of Stephanie’s Stash in Toronto.abled Grey (nee Skein)—A mostly finished sweater and long-time yarn resident of Stephanie’s Stash in Toronto.
Cabled Grey died suddenly at home following a lengthy illness, surrounded by other knitting projects and a few knitters, on the 14th of November 2009. Cabled Grey was an ill-fitting sweater with raglan sleeves and largish cables, who began life as nine skeins of a pretty decent three-ply merino purchased at 20 percent off, and had marinated in the stash for about eight years. In his very early days, Cabled displayed a great deal of potential when executed as a beautiful gauge swatch, holding his shape and stitch definition, even when he was washed. Cabled will be remembered always for the promise he demonstrated when first wound into a ball of yarn, moments before his unfortunate infection with the terminal sweater pattern which was his eventual undoing. The yarns with whom he shared the work-in-progress basket fondly recall the cheerful way he endured re-knits due to errors in his chart, which of course became errors on his front, and for the way that he mostly managed to be a garment despite the way his raglan shapings were hopelessly miswritten in the pattern. They respected the way that Cabled held his ribbings high, despite the inescapable truth that there was absolutely no way that his designer had possibly written down the right number of stitches to pick up for his buttonband, leaving him eternally crooked round the front and neck.
In most obituaries, this is the part where one would say that the dearly departed fought valiantly or bravely, but such was not the case with Cabled Grey, who gave up on being a sweater faster than a sixteen-year-old can spend $50 at the mall. From the very moment that Cabled’s back was cast on, he was tragically doomed, for even though his gauge swatch had twenty-eight stitches to four inches, it turned out that Cabled actually harbored a secret desire to have twenty-two stitches to four inches, which is a destiny that he manifested about midway through the second front, creating a sweater that had cardigan fronts of two dramatically different sizes, which would have been fine were the breasts of the recipient likewise as different as a tangerine and a watermelon, which they were not.
Cabled was ripped back several times in his life, but it never seemed to bother him at all, and, in fact, his knitter rather suspected that he was trying to prolong the knitting process by embracing the errors and re-knits. He was the sort of project that was really able to cut loose and let things happen. Even as his knitter was begging him to please get his gauge together and honor the commitment that is making a sweater, Cabled was able to stay true to his inner nature, which was that of a mercurial, flighty yarn with no real goals. (Suggestions that Cabled Grey may have had some hemp in his fiber content are untrue, but we see why knitters might have gotten the idea.) In fact it was the way that Cabled was happy just to be knit, not to be knit with any degree of quality, and his stunning ability to avoid becoming a sweater through passive aggressive behavior that earned him the playful nickname “total piece of crap.”
Despite several interventions, treatments, re-knits, and pattern adjustments, Cabled Grey eventually succumbed to the terrible pattern he had contracted. One desperate final surgery was attempted, but the craftspeople present during this ill-fated procedure all supported the diagnosis of the original knitter, which was that Cabled should be helped to the great big cedar chest in the sky, and never attempted again. Cabled entered palliative care in the hall closet, until the 14th of November, when he received his final visit from neighborhood knitters during a “stash tidy.” Knitters at the visitation were welcome to spend a few final moments with Grey, and every single one agreed wholeheartedly that it truly was best that this struggle end, as the knitter looked sort of desperate and frantic when Grey was taken from the bag, and it was clear that Cabled had an inoperable series of obviously miscrossed cables that were causing both him and his knitter a great deal of intractable pain. Knitters surrounded Cabled at this time, and disconnected him from knit-support as they withdrew the needles. Shortly thereafter Cabled Grey came to the end of his repeat, and the knitters departed, sadly acknowledging that he was indeed hopelessly ugly and unfortunately ill-fitting, and had a really, really bad pattern. Services, as brief as they were, consisted of dumping the sweater into the Goodwill bin, while quaffing red wine and declaring “Life’s too short for bad knits,” “Don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out,” and the profound, “Holy cow, I can’t believe I spent that much time and money on that sweater; man, I’m just pissed.”
Cabled Grey, or rather the idea of what Cabled Grey could have been, will be sadly missed by his knitter, the needles he so persistently occupied, and the pattern that was his ultimate undoing. Cabled Grey is survived by his daughter, Leftover Grey Yarn, who is thinking about becoming a hat to honor her father. Blue Mohair, who occupied the space next to Cabled Grey on the shelf for many years, will miss him tremendously, although seems rather fond of the cute hand-dyed laceweight who’s moved in. As usual, the sock yarns have no idea what is going on.
The departure of Cabled Grey was immediately followed by the casting on of Alpaca Lace Shawl, who shall be knit in his memory. In lieu of flowers, patterns without errors and yarn with good attitude may be sent to Stephanie’s Stash, although truthfully, she’s pretty much over it.