My most perfect project to date. You’d never suspect the drama involvedĀ just getting it on to the needles.

It started off just like the odd Sunday evening often does: on my Macbook, searching the Ravelry database. Normally this is just the internet equivalent of window shopping, but this time I had a plan: I had yarn ā€“ stash yarn in fact – so I was focused, and frugal,Ā at the same time. It was luscious yarn ā€“ Shilasdair Luxury DK ā€“ gorgeous stuff. The perfect blend of angora, camel, cashmere & lambswool. The perfect colour. The perfect yarn. All I was missing was the perfect pattern.

So I began my search. It started off smoothly, but of course as it carried on I was juggling 8 open tabs. While I was searching the pattern listing, I opened a new tab for patterns that were interesting. Then I clicked through to the completed projects for that pattern. As I waited for that page to load, I bounced back to the pattern listing, opened a new tab for another pattern, and then returned to the tab of the page that had finished loading.

My searching had gone from a nice, leisurely browse, to being a little like a squirrel with ADD scrambling around, hoping to suddenly stumble across an acorn along the way. As ifĀ I believed the knitting apocalypse was just around the corner, and I was going to try and eyeball every pattern I could before Ravelry broke, and never got back up and running again.

Even so, I was still enjoying myself. Hunting for the perfect marriage of yarn and pattern can almost be thrilling, especially when you know you are getting so close.

But then, something terrible happened – I stumbled upon the Catboat Cardigan.

Statement shoulder detail.

Deep garter stitch cuffs and hem.

Leather buttons.

It was like Amy Christoffers had designed it just for me. I was beside myself. I had never been so excited about knitting something in my whole life.

But ā€“ and this was the terrible part ā€“ the perfect yarn I had, wasnā€™t the perfect yarn for the pattern. It was far too soft and needed more structure to make the piece work. At the very least, I thought the button band would end up being floppy and flappy.

I couldnā€™t stop my mind from racing. Where was I going to find the perfect yarn? What if it wasnā€™t available in South Africa? What if I ordered it online from the States and it got lost in the post? What if I never found the perfect yarn?

All of this started with trying to find just the right pattern for the perfect yarn. Then I had the perfect pattern, but was stuck finding just the right yarn for it. And still no pattern for the perfect yarn. Is your head spinning too?

Exactly.

So I ended my pleasant Sunday night browse in the middle of a knitting nightmare. How I fell asleep that night, Iā€™ll never know.

When my son woke up at 5am the next morning, I did the first thing that any self-respecting knitter in my situation would do: I put Cars in the DVD machine for my son to watch for the 75th time, made myself a cup of coffee, and then got myself back onto Ravelry, this time to search for the perfect yarn.

Thatā€™s not really true. Most knitters would have put on Cars, made themselves a cup of coffee, Ā sat down, picked up a nice easy project, and then knitted themselves calm before trying to resolve the crisis.

It would have been the best way to stay level-headed under the circumstances. Unfortunately I had a hit a snag on a pair of vanilla socks. I was still sulking about it, so I wasnā€™t ready to pick them up again.

It is in situations like these, that I am often reminded how wonderful it is to belong to a craft group and have friends who are on Ravelry. No one else understands how critical these matters are. I sent a message to a friend who very kindly indulged me in my emergency, and commiserated with me about the predicament I found myself in. And sheĀ made the excellent suggestion of using the aforementioned perfect yarn, on a smaller needle, or reinforcing the button band with some contrasting fabric.

Unfortunately using the smaller needle would have meant playing yarn chicken, which I simply do not have the constitution for. And if it had ended up being sleeveless I would have torn my hair out.

A reinforced buttonband was an excellent idea, but I would have just manufactured another crisis by getting myself into a state having to choose the perfect fabric to go with the perfect yarn and the perfect pattern. Too many variables to deal with. The only thing I could do was put aside my perfect yarn, and postpone one pursuit of perfection in favour of another.

I had to wait until Tuesday before my LYS was open again, so Monday was really hard. I knitted a swatch for another project, which helped ease some anxiety in the moment, but after I washed it and blocked it out to dry, I started feeling antsy again. That afternoon I visited my folks, and I noticed that my father was wearing a fantastic heathery, wine-coloured, heavily cabled lambswool/merino cardigan that he bought in the UK (canā€™t find that kind of gorgeousnessĀ in our shops here). It would have been perfect for the Catboat. I considered the idea of sneaking into his cupboard in the middle of the night to unravel it, but decided to ask him straight up rather than conducting a clandestine mission. He said no, but if he had known how happy it would have made his only daughter, he would have said yes.

My recce at the LYS on Tuesday wasnā€™t very successful. I couldnā€™t see anything suitable. Rowan Felted Tweed might have been an option, but with the high collar, it would have been too scratchy, and I planned to wear it often. There was nothing else that really jumped out at me. So I sent another melodramatic message to my friend to look for some more moral support and ask if she had any yarn ideas, because I was just past thinking rationally at that point.

Once she suggested Nurturing Fibres Supertwist DK and I looked it up online, relief washed over me and I knew the planets had just aligned – the Aubergine colourway was almost exactly the same colour as my dadā€™s cabled cardigan that I had threatened to unravel, so it was definitely meant to be.

Everything fell into place – while I was waiting for my Nurturing Fibers order, I found the perfect pattern for the yarn I was originally searching for, so I was able to cast on and keep myself (relatively) calm until I could start my Catboat.

And the crisis I anticipated would happen when I started to lookĀ for the perfect buttons never materialized. My shoemaker generously gave me some very soft black leather off-cuts and then told me to go to the Cape Town Sewing Centre. There I got them to make 10 covered buttons, which they charged me R11.50 for. I almost felt guilty paying so little for them.

For a pastime that is supposedĀ to be relaxing, the anxiety that can go along with knitting is hard to describe. Nobody said the path to perfect would be easy, right? But after all the frantic searching, the detailed research, the panicked emails – after the drama of trying to get gauge, the frogging, the on-the-fly mods – after all of that – when youā€™re left with the perfect finished object, using the perfect yarn, and the perfect pattern, finished off with the perfect (cheap!) leather buttons, it is all worth it. Worth it enough to do it all over again with the next perfect yarn you find.