Thursday, February 09, 2006

You Need a Thneed

In the Lorax by Dr. Seuss, The Once-ler and his family knit thneeds from the tops of truffula trees. Thneeds, as you may recall, were oddly-shaped, multi-purpose. . .uh. . .things. Like snowflakes, no two thneeds were the same. As a child (and even now) I imagined that thneeds were knitted sweaters or jumpsuits that had a few extra sleeves. Behold the makings of a thneed!

Machine Washable Purple Sheepie Thneed!

One body with hood and 3.2-ish sleeves. Should I attempt to find places to attach the extra pieces? (Why did I ask that? Someone is bound to say yes.)

Yes, I finished knitting Rogue for the second time and I still don't have a complete sweater to show for all that work. The super terrific, wonderful, amazing people at Chester Farms really came through for me. Not only did they manage to locate yarn from the same dye lot, they made sure that it perfectly matched the sample that I sent. Then, they sent me enough yarn to reknit the discolored bits for free. FREE! No charge on the yarn or the shipping! And a note of apology, too. Let me shout it from the highest overpass in Houston, "The purveyors of the machine washable purple sheepies are the best!"

Many tiny orangesI'd better get cracking on seaming Rogue/Thneed together. The weather is supposed to be cold this weekend. It may be the last chance I have to wear a sweater before next winter. My orange tree thinks that it is already spring. (Click that photo to get a better look at the little oranges.)

12 comments:

Pumpkinmama said...

Well, I would certainly hope they'd do all that for free! I'm glad you got a good response, and that your Rogue will be lovely and un-striped. And those baby oranges are so cute - do you eat them when they grow up, or are they just decorative?

amylovie said...

Let's hear it for great customer service!!

Amy

Anonymous said...

I don't know how you're going to resist the temptation to sew all the sleeves onto the body in some way. I don't know that I could.

I'm trying to brainstorm what you could do with the extra sleeves. Sew them to each other, add a handle at the wrist end, and have a kind of weirdly shaped bag? How perfectly precious it would be to have a bag that matches your sweater. :)

Agnes said...

What a relief to know that you don't have to wear a two-tone Rogue! That's good customer service and they know it would pay off in the long run. At least they are in my Knitting Shops bookmark now.
Hope to see your seamed Rogue soon.

Jennifer said...

Wow! That is awesome customer service!

Awe. look at the little baby oranges! In our previous house we had an orange tree in our backyard. When it bloomed, the smell of the blossoms was so lovely!

Laura said...

Wow! Your Rogue (and, what? a quarter?) looks great! Although I agree wholeheartedly with your first commenter that they SHOULD have done all that for free, these days it is sadly infrequent that you find people offering that kind of customer service. So yay for them!

Not to be too "Martha", but you could stuff the extra sleeve bits with lavender or cedar or similar and use them to keep Nasty Bugs away from your knitwear. It seems a shame just to frog those pretty cables.

Anonymous said...

OMG, I'm so happy for you!!! I was really worried that this would end pretty terribly - an unfinished Rogue, hatred for the yarn company, wasted hours... I've been there and it sucks.

Terby said...

That is good service. Glad to hear they helped you out. I'm really trying to not be silly and suggest you grow a few more arms and bits so you can take advantage of the sleeves. Your blocking is very crisp - do you steam or wet block?

Anonymous said...

I'm glad they "fixed" it, at least in whatever way they could without doing the extra knitting for you! It looks great. I'm jealous; I've got sleeves done for mine, but only four poor pitiful rows done on the body. I'm now convinced I won't get to wear it until next summer -- because, like you, I recently quit my job and I no longer have to have a sweater to wear in my meat-locker of a classroom!

I have to tell you, I cracked up at your "Thneed" comparison. One of my 3-year-old son's favorite books and movies is "The Lorax," and everytime he watches the movie he says "Mama! They are knitting, like you knit! Mama! Could you knit me a Thneed?" Eventually, I'm going to sit down and make one up for him -- I guess I need to get cracking on that before he grows out of this.

Anyway, I'll quit babbling and return to the main point -- Wow! It looks great; I can't wait to see how it looks seemed up and modeled!

Helen said...

'someone' would say yes?? where the heck is monkee! she'll say yes!

glad it worked out :)

Meredith said...

Better hurry up! Tomorrow it's only supposed to be 50 or something crazy like that! ;)

Anonymous said...

See, I'm from San Diego, so your comment: "It's getting cold, so this might be my last chance to wear a sweater before winter" confused me. I was thinking... she must be spring. But then I realized that it gets COLD not cold in other places where you may need more than just one thneed.