Isn't this thing pretty?
No. No, it is not pretty. Not at all.
It WAS pretty. Before I soaked it in a sink of cold water. You should have seen it.
I spent some time googling last night, to give a name to this wonderful handmade beauty that I trashed. At first I thought it was a simple crocheted shawl, but I held it up and could see a vague, but plain, rectangular shape. Couldn't be a baby afghan, though, because it was too delicate.
The circles you see up there, the tightly scrunched little butthole shapes? Those used to be the most amazing things. There was a regular chain stitched inner circle, very, very tiny, and around it the yarn was drawn out like spokes, but still loose, as in not chain stitched even. Each "spoke" was made of the most delicate yarn I had ever seen. The yarn went out to the edge and back again, and giving the illusion of spider webs almost. Each spider web was the size of a plum. And they were connected with an intricate winding pattern I couldn't follow.
When I held it up, it was a lacy network of large, wispy circles. I couldn't believe it wasn't just disintegrating in my hands like cotton candy. Can you imagine it?
It smelled like moth balls, so I wanted to give it a little soak. I put it in a bathroom sink with very cold water and a tiny bit of super gentle shampoo, like no-chemical, no artificial anything, organic-type shampoo.
Now it's less than half the size it used to be and compacted down to nothing more notable than rows and rows of bourgeois popcorn stitches and a tangle of Xs. You couldn't even see the rows before. It just looked heavenly. There's no stretching it back out, either. Those little webs have as much chance of stretching out to their original shape as a black hole in space. They feel like hard knots in the middle. It behaved exactly like spun sugar in the end, retreating back into itself and losing all firmament until it barely resembled itself, like a dried slug.
I did more googling and discovered that the possibility is that it wasn't wool but maybe SILK, and is probably stitched in a very old tatting pattern, which is basically lace making. I don't know. It felt woolly, but soft and baby woolly, not sturdy woolly. Could it have been silk? I've never felt silk yarn. I've felt silk pillowcases and silk shirts, and this was definitely not like those. Not slippery.
Here is a picture of the closest I could find to what it looked like:
From a vintage tatting pattern book.
Just look at the difference. Terrible.
I told Rick the worst part is that someone made this. Someone spent hours and hours working with a microscopic tatting needle making this giant, giant piece of lace, essentially, out of the softest, silkiest yarn ever. White, even.
And I totally ruined it. Of course, I'm not the jerk in her family who gave it away to the thrift store, at least. But I do feel like I threw a big glass of turpentine on a masterpiece painting. A masterpiece painting that I had managed to snag for ME for a pittance and that was going to be receiving my adoration for decades. And now the lady is out there in the universe continuum somewhere with the back of her hand across her forehead, swooning from shock while someone fans her, and she is saying, "Oh that filthy ugly harlot, look what travesty she has committed, my wedding veil that I spent six years of my childhood training for, tatting in the shops to learn all the most beautiful patterns, the veil that took one entire year to create, sitting by the fire every night with my precious yarn and no other aid than my tiny lamp and God's grace...."
I bet it's something like that.
Does anyone have any knowledge of what I did wrong? Do you think it was old silk, and not able to be wet at all? If it was wool, why did it compress exponentially in a sink of cold water? Should I keep it, forever being reminded of my own idiocy?
