Grumpy

I feel low, headache-filled and fed up. I am sleep deprived, achy and the noise from behind is ongoing and relentless. Little bear is gorgeous, but I haven't given him enough attention today. He is safely at nursery.

And I saw the most horrific thing on my friend, ebay. It was a hand knitted sweater. I was having a quick look at the children's clothes to see if there were any bargains hovering, and there was this sweater. Someone had taken time and effort to knit a sweater in the most repulsive combination of yellows and sort-of-hope-it's-brown colour. The variegated yarn had worked out into the sort of 'sixties-special-effect' pattern to make the absolute worst as it looked like a visual representation of hitting your head hard with a baseball bat.

I looked at that and thought - my stuff looks okay to me, but that sweater looks like it was knitted as a migraine. Does my stuff look that bad to everyone else?

Also, someone took huge amounts of time and effort over it, it looks like it was never worn, and I don't think they will get the cost of the yarn back. There were no bids on it when I had a look and less than an hour to go.

So part of me really feels for the poor knitter who is not getting anyone interested in the item that probably took her/him a week, and part of me thinks - I know cats are colour blind, but I bet it would still work to keep Oscar off the flower bed.

I am sure that it is someone's taste somewhere. It really isn't mine (you may have guessed) and as I am grumpy I am being a bit cruel but it did get me thinking. How it is so hard to know when you start to knit whether something will do for someone. And how hard it must be to spend hours and hours knitting something, only to see the appalled expression on the recipient's face.

Also, I know the feeling of buying expensive wool, knitting lots of cables, and then having darling uncle complaining that my knitting is wrong because it all drops when he washes it (stuff I have knitted for myself never does). The spin setting on his twin tub is obviously not a factor.